Are psychics John Edward & Derek Acorah real or fake?
zalzon
I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
My first inclination is to believe they are just 'cold reading' the
person. But I don't see them cold reading very much, especially Derek
Acorah. Also, they seem to get details which could not possibly have
been obtained just by cold reading. How is this possible?
I've heard many skeptics say that their shows are heavily edited which
is fair enough. Still it seems unlikely that the could stumble upon
specific, often private, information on a person just by cold reading.
If these guys have the power to talk to the dead, then they should be
able to solve any and all murder mysteries & missing children cases
for the police. Why don't they?
I've heard that Derek Acorah offered to meet renound skeptic Randi on
neutral ground to prove/disprove his abilities. But Randi did not
want to meet on neutral ground insisting that he have total control of
the experiment. If true, then such skeptics are guilty of fraud in
the same way they accuse so-called psychics of being frauds. Their
only end goal ends up being debunking rather than a genuine search for
credibility.
m II
zalzon wrote:
> Hi,
> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
It would be lot more convincing if it were live. They tape about three
or four (or more) hours per one hour air time. What you see is heavily
edited to make him look good.
The studio also has people planted outside to listen to the audience
members before they come in. Once inside, there are microphones
everywhere. The long wait before the taping starts gives them even more
information.
People talk while they're waiting. "I'll ask about dead uncle Harry"
says one audience member to another. That gets sent to 'psychic' in
waiting. This provides information that the fraud can use once he is
out on stage.
A good 'expose' may be found here.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/2003/VOID0509.htm
mike
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/ /\ \/ /\ ohmwork...@spots.ca \/ /\ \/ /
/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/
..let the cat out to reply..
RJRSJ1
>zalzon wrote:
>
>
>> Hi,
>> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>
>It would be lot more convincing if it were live. They tape about three
>or four (or more) hours per one hour air time. What you see is heavily
>edited to make him look good.
Saw John Edward live in an auditoriumof about 2500 people. Seating was General
Admission and he was about 98% accurate. My opinion - he's real or else I
wouldn't have gone to see him...Duh! But, I do respect others that don't
believe in him. I refuse to put down anyone that thinks he's fake - that would
be awfully "big-headed" of me. ;-)
MC.
rjr...@aol.comzyxqyzx (RJRSJ1) wrote:
Investigative Files
John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved
Joe Nickell
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Superstar "psychic medium" John Edward is a stand-up guy. Unlike the
spiritualists of yore, who typically plied their trade in dark-room
séances, Edward and his ilk often perform before live audiences and even
under the glare of TV lights. Indeed, Edward (a pseudonym: he was born
John MaGee Jr.) has his own popular show on the SciFi channel called
Crossing Over, which has gone into national syndication (Barrett 2001;
Mui 2001). I was asked by television newsmagazine Dateline NBC to study
Edward's act: was he really talking to the dead?
The Old Spiritualism
Today's spiritualism traces its roots to 1848 and the schoolgirl antics
of the Fox sisters, Maggie and Katie. They seemed to communicate with
the ghost of a murdered peddler by means of mysterious rapping sounds.
Four decades later the foxy sisters confessed how they had produced the
noises by trickery (Nickell 1994), but meanwhile others discovered they
too could be "mediums" (those who supposedly communicate with the dead).
The "spiritualism" craze spread across the United States, Europe, and
beyond. In darkened séance rooms, lecture halls, and theaters, various
"spirit" phenomena occurred. The Davenport Brothers conjured up spirit
entities to play musical instruments while the two mediums were,
apparently, securely tied in a special "spirit cabinet." Unfortunately
the Davenports were exposed many times, once by a local printer. He
visited their spook show and volunteered as part of an audience
committee to help secure the two mediums. He took that opportunity to
secretly place some printer's ink on the neck of a violin, and after the
séance one of the duo had his shoulder smeared with the black substance
(Nickell 1999).
In Boston, while photographer William H. Mumler was recycling some glass
photographic plates, he accidentally obtained faint images of previous
sitters. He soon adapted the technique to producing "spirit extras" in
photographs of his clients. But Mumler's scam was revealed when some of
his ethereal entities were recognized as living Boston residents
(Nickell 1994).
The great magician Harry Houdini (1874-1926) crusaded against phony
spiritualists, seeking out elderly mediums who taught him the tricks of
the trade. For example, while sitters touched hands around the séance
table, mediums had clever ways of gaining the use of one hand. (One
method was to slowly move the hands close together so that the fingers
of one could be substituted for those of the other.) This allowed the
production of special effects, such as causing a tin trumpet to appear
to be levitating. Houdini gave public demonstrations of the deceptions.
"Do Spirits Return?" asked one of his posters. "Houdini Says No-and
Proves It" (Gibson 1977, 157).
Continuing the tradition, I have investigated various mediums, sometimes
attending séances undercover and once obtaining police warrants against
a fraudulent medium from the notorious Camp Chesterfield spiritualist
center in Indiana (Nickell 1998). The camp is the subject of the book
The Psychic Mafia, written by a former medium who recanted and revealed
the tricks of floating trumpets (with disembodied voices), ghostly
apparitions, materializing "apports," and other fake phenomena (Keene
1976)-some of which I have also witnessed firsthand.
Mental Mediumship
The new breed of spiritualists-like Edward, James Van Praagh, Rosemary
Altea, Sylvia Browne, and George Anderson-avoid the physical approach
with its risks of exposure and possible criminal charges. Instead they
opt for the comparatively safe "mental mediumship" which involves the
purported use of psychic ability to obtain messages from the spirit
realm.
This is not a new approach, since mediums have long done readings for
their credulous clients. In the early days they exhibited "the classic
form of trance mediumship, as practiced by shamans and oracles," giving
spoken "'spirit messages' that ranged all the way from personal (and
sometimes strikingly accurate) trivia to hours-long public
trance-lectures on subjects of the deepest philosophical and religious
import" (McHargue 1972).
Some mediums produced "automatic" or "trance" or "spirit" writing, which
the entities supposedly dictated to the medium or produced by guiding
his or her hand. Such writings could be in flowery language indeed, as
in this excerpt from one spirit writing in my collection:
Oh my Brother-I am so glad to be able to come here with you and hold
sweet communion for it has been a long time since I have controlled this
medium but I remember how well used I had become to her magnetism[,] but
we will soon get accustomed to her again and then renew the pleasant
times we used to have. I want to assure you that we are all here with
you this afternoon[-]Father[,] Mother[,] little Alice[-]and so glad to
find it so well with you and we hope and feel dear Brother that you have
seen the darkest part of life and that times are not with you now as
they have been . . . .
and so on in this talkative fashion.
"Cold Reading"
By contrast, today's spirits-whom John Edward and his fellow mediums
supposedly contact-seem to have poor memories and difficulty
communicating. For example, in one of his on-air séances (on Larry King
Live, June 19, 1998), Edward said: "I feel like there's a J- or
G-sounding name attached to this." He also perceived "Linda or Lindy or
Leslie; who's this L name?" Again, he got a "Maggie or Margie, or some
M-G-sounding name," and yet again heard from "either Ellen or Helen, or
Eleanore-it's like an Ellen-sounding name." Gone is the clear-speaking
eloquence of yore; the dead now seem to mumble.
The spirits also seemingly communicate to Edward et al. as if they were
engaging in pantomime. As Edward said of one alleged spirit communicant,
in a Dateline "He's pointing to his head; something had to affect the
mind or the head, from what he's showing me." No longer, apparently, can
the dead speak in flowing Victorian sentences, but instead are reduced
to gestures, as if playing a game of charades.
One suspects, of course, that it is not the imagined spirits who have
changed but rather the approach today's mediums have chosen to employ.
It is, indeed, a shrewd technique known as "cold reading"-so named
because the subject walks in "cold"; that is, the medium lacks advance
information about the person (Gresham 1953). It is an artful method of
gleaning information from the sitter, then feeding it back as mystical
revelation.
The "psychic" can obtain clues by observing dress and body language
(noting expressions that indicate when one is on or off track), asking
questions (which if correct will appear as "hits" but otherwise will
seem innocent queries), and inviting the subject to interpret the vague
statements offered. For example, nearly anyone can respond to the
mention of a common object (like a ring or watch) with a personal
recollection that can seem to transform the mention into a hit. (For
more on cold reading see Gresham 1953; Hyman 1977; Nickell 2000.)
It should not be surprising that Edward is skilled at cold reading, an
old fortunetelling technique. His mother was a "psychic junkie" who
threw fortunetelling "house parties," one of the alleged clairvoyants
advising the then-fifteen-year-old that he had "wonderful psychic
abilities." He began doing card readings for friends and family, then
progressed to psychic fairs where he soon learned that names and other
"validating information" sometimes applied to the dead rather than the
living. Eventually he changed his billing from "psychic" to "psychic
medium" (Edward 1999). The revised approach set him on the road to
stardom. In addition to his TV show, he now commands hundreds of dollars
for a private reading and is booked two years in advance (Mui 2001).
"Hot Reading"
Although cold reading is the main technique of the new spiritualists,
they can also employ "hot" reading on occasion. Houdini (1924) exposed
many of these information-gathering techniques including using planted
microphones to listen in on clients as they gathered in the mediums'
anterooms-a technique Houdini himself used to impress visitors with his
"telepathy" (Gibson 1976, 13). Reformed medium M. Lamar Keene's The
Psychic Mafia (1976) describes such methods as conducting advance
research on clients, sharing other mediums' files (what Keene terms
"mediumistic espionage"), noting casual remarks made in conversation
before a reading, and so on.
An article in Time magazine suggested John Edward may have used just
such chicanery. One subject, a marketing manager named Michael O'Neill
had received apparent messages from his dead grandfather but, when his
segment aired, he noted that it had been improved through editing.
According to Time's Leon Jaroff (2001):
Now suspicious, O'Neill recalled that while the audience was waiting to
be seated, Edward's aides were scurrying about, striking up
conversations and getting people to fill out cards with their name,
family tree and other facts. Once inside the auditorium, where each
family was directed to preassigned seats, more than an hour passed
before show time while "technical difficulties" backstage were corrected.
Edward has a policy of not responding to criticism, but the executive
producer of Crossing Over insists: "No information is given to John
Edward about the members of the audience with whom he talks. There is no
eavesdropping on gallery conversations, and there are no 'tricks' to
feed information to John." He labeled the Time article "a mix of
erroneous observations and baseless theories" (Nordlander 2001).
Very Hot
Be that as it may, on Dateline Edward was actually caught in an attempt
to pass off previously gained knowledge as spirit revelation. During the
session he said of the spirits, "They're telling me to acknowledge
Anthony," and when the cameraman signaled that was his name, Edward
seemed surprised, asking "That's you? Really?" He further queried: "Had
you not seen Dad before he passed? Had you either been away or been
distanced?" Later, playing the taped segment for me, Dateline reporter
John Hockenberry challenged me with Edward's apparent hit: "He got
Anthony. That's pretty good." I agreed but added, "We've seen mediums
who mill about before sessions and greet people and chat with them and
pick up things."
Indeed, it turned out that that is just what Edward had done. Hours
before the group reading, Tony had been the cameraman on another Edward
shoot (recording him at his hobby, ballroom dancing). Significantly, the
two men had chatted and Edward had obtained useful bits of information
that he afterward pretended had come from the spirits. In a follow-up
interview Hockenberry revealed the fact and grilled an evasive Edward:
HOCKENBERRY: So were you aware that his dad had died before you did his
reading?
Mr. EDWARD: I think he-I think earlier in the-in the day, he had said
something.
HOCKENBERRY: It makes me feel like, you know, that that's fairly
significant. I mean, you knew that he had a dead relative and you knew
it was the dad.
Mr. EDWARD: OK.
HOCKENBERRY: So that's not some energy coming through, that's something
you knew going in. You knew his name was Tony and you knew that his dad
had died and you knew that he was in the room, right? That gets you . . .
Mr. EDWARD: That's a whole lot of thinking you got me doing, then. Like
I said, I react to what's coming through, what I see, hear and feel. I
interpret what I'm seeing hearing and feeling, and I define it. He
raised his hand, it made sense for him. Great.
HOCKENBERRY: But a cynic would look at that and go, 'Hey,' you know, 'He
knows it's the cameraman, he knows it's DATELINE. You know, wouldn't
that be impressive if he can get the cameraman to cry?'
Mr. EDWARD: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Not at all.
But try to weasel out of it as he might, Edward had obviously been
caught cheating: pretending that information he had gleaned earlier had
just been revealed by spirits and feigning surprise that it applied to
Tony the cameraman. (And that occurred long before Time had suggested
that an Inside Edition program-February 27, 2001-was probably "the first
nationally televised show to take a look at the Edward phenomenon." That
honor instead goes to Dateline NBC.)
In his new book Crossing Over, Edward tries to minimize the Dateline
exposé, and in so doing breaks his own rule of not responding to
criticism. He rebukes Hockenberry for "his big Gotcha! moment," adding:
Hockenberry came down on the side of the professional skeptic they used
as my foil. He was identified as Joe Nickell, a member of the Committee
for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, which
likes to simplify things and call itself CSICOP. He did the usual sound
bites: that modern mediums are fast-talkers on fishing expeditions
making money on people's grief-"the same old dogs with new tricks," in
Hockenberry's words.
Edward claims to ignore any advance information that he may get from
those he reads, but concedes, "it's futile to say this to a tough
skeptic" (Edward 2001, 242-243).
Edward may have benefitted from actual information on another occasion,
while undergoing a "scientific" test of his alleged powers (Schwartz et
al. 2001). In video clips shown on Dateline, Edward was reading
subjects-who were brought into the hotel room where he sat with his back
to the door-when he impressed his tester with an atypical revelation.
Edward stated he was "being shown the movie Pretty in Pink" and asked if
there was "a pink connection." Then he queried, "Are you, like, wearing
all pink?" The unidentified man acknowledged that he was. Yet Edward had
thought the subject was a woman, and I suspect that erroneous guess was
because of the color of his attire; I further suspect Edward knew it was
pink, that as the man entered the room Edward glimpsed a flash of the
color as it was reflected off some shiny surface, such as the glass of a
picture frame, the lens of the video camera, etc. I challenge Edward to
demonstrate his reputed color-divining ability under suitably controlled
conditions that I will set up.
Inflating "Hits"
In addition to shrewd cold reading and out-and-out cheating, "psychics"
and "mediums" can also boost their apparent accuracy in other ways. They
get something of a free ride from the tendency of credulous folk to
count the apparent hits and ignore the misses. In the case of Edward, my
analysis of 125 statements or pseudostatements (i.e., questions) he made
on a Larry King Live program (June 19, 1998) showed that he was
incorrect about as often as he was right and that his hits were mostly
weak ones. (For example he mentioned "an older female" with "an
M-sounding name," either an aunt or grandmother, he stated, and the
caller supplied "Mavis" without identifying the relationship; see
Nickell 1998.)
Another session-for an episode of Crossing Over attended by a reporter
for The New York Times Magazine, Chris Ballard (2001)-had Edward
"hitting well below 50 percent for the day." Indeed, he twice spent
"upward of 20 minutes stuck on one person, shooting blanks but not
accepting the negative responses." This is a common technique:
persisting in an attempt to redeem error, cajoling or even browbeating a
sitter (as Sylvia Browne often does), or at least making the incorrect
responses seem the person's fault. "Do not not honor him!" Edward
exclaimed at one point, then (according to Ballard) "staring down the
bewildered man."
When the taped episode actually aired, the two lengthy failed readings
had been edited out, along with second-rate offerings. What remained
were two of the best readings of the show (Ballard 2001). This seems to
confirm the allegation in the Time article that episodes were edited to
make Edward seem more accurate, even reportedly splicing in clips of one
sitter nodding yes "after statements with which he remembers
disagreeing" (Jaroff 2001).
Edited or not, sessions involving a group offer increased chances for
success. By tossing out a statement and indicating a section of the
audience rather than an individual, the performing "medium" makes it
many times more likely that someone will "acknowledge" it as a "hit."
Sometimes multiple audience members will acknowledge an offering,
whereupon the performer typically narrows the choice down to a single
person and builds on the success. Edward uses just such a technique
(Ballard 2001).
Still another ploy used by Edward and his fellow "psychic mediums" is to
suggest that people who cannot acknowledge a hit may find a connection
later. "Write this down," an insistent Edward sometimes says, or in some
other way suggests the person study the apparent miss. He may become
even more insistent, the positive reinforcement diverting attention from
the failure and giving the person an opportunity to find some adaptable
meaning later (Nickell 1998).
Debunking Versus Investigation
Some skeptics believe the way to counter Edward and his ilk is to
reproduce his effect, to demonstrate the cold-reading technique to radio
and TV audiences. Of course that approach is unconvincing unless one
actually poses as a medium and then-after seemingly making contact with
subjects' dead loved ones-reveals the deception. Although audiences
typically fall for the trick (witness Inside Edition's use of it), I
deliberately avoid this approach for a variety of reasons, largely
because of ethical concerns. I rather agree with Houdini (1924, xi) who
had done spiritualistic stunts during his early career:
At the time I appreciated the fact that I surprised my clients, but
while aware of the fact that I was deceiving them I did not see or
understand the seriousness of trifling with such sacred sentimentality
and the baneful result which inevitably followed. To me it was a lark. I
was a mystifier and as such my ambition was being gratified and my love
for a mild sensation satisfied. After delving deep I realized the
seriousness of it all. As I advanced to riper years of experience I was
brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the
hallowed reverence which the average human being bestows on the
departed, and when I personally became afflicted with similar grief I
was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and
for the first time realized that it bordered on crime.
Of course tricking people in order to educate them is not the same as
deceiving them for crass personal gain, but to toy with their deepest
emotions-however briefly and well intentioned-is to cross a line I
prefer not to do. Besides, I believe it can be very counterproductive.
It may not be the alleged medium but rather the debunker himself who is
perceived as dishonest, and he may come across as arrogant, cynical, and
manipulative-not heroic as he imagines.
As well, an apparent reproduction of an effect does not necessarily mean
the cause was the same. (For example, I have seen several skeptical
demonstrations of "weeping" icons that employed trickery more
sophisticated than that used for "real" crying effigies.) Far better, I
am convinced, is showing evidence of the actual methods employed, as I
did in collaboration with Dateline NBC.
Although John Edward was among five "highly skilled mediums" who
allegedly fared well on tests of their ability (Schwartz et al.
2001)-experiments critiqued elsewhere in this issue (Wiseman and
O'Keeffe, see page 26)-he did not claim validation on Larry King Live.
When King (2001) asked Edward if he thought there would ever be proof of
spirit contact, Edward responded by suggesting proof was unattainable,
that only belief matters: ". . . I think that to prove it is a personal
thing. It is like saying, prove God. If you have a belief system and you
have faith, then there is nothing really more than that." But this is an
attempt to insulate a position and to evade or shift the burden of
proof, which is always on the claimant. As Houdini (1924, 270)
emphatically stated, "It is not for us to prove the mediums are
dishonest, it is for them to prove that they are honest." In my opinion
John Edward has already failed that test.
Acknowledgments
I appreciate the assistance of Tom Flynn who helped me analyze the video
clips mentioned in the text and refine the hypothesis that Edward may
have glimpsed a reflection. I am also grateful to Tim Binga, Barry Karr,
Kevin Christopher, Ben Radford, and Ranjit Sandhu for other assistance.
RJRSJ1
>In article <20040303215357...@mb-m05.aol.com>,
> rjr...@aol.comzyxqyzx (RJRSJ1) wrote:
>
>> >
>> >zalzon wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >> Hi,
>> >> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>> >> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>> >
>> >It would be lot more convincing if it were live. They tape about three
>> >or four (or more) hours per one hour air time. What you see is heavily
>> >edited to make him look good.
>>
>> Saw John Edward live in an auditoriumof about 2500 people. Seating was
>General
>> Admission and he was about 98% accurate. My opinion - he's real or else I
>> wouldn't have gone to see him...Duh! But, I do respect others that don't
>> believe in him. I refuse to put down anyone that thinks he's fake - that
>would
>> be awfully "big-headed" of me. ;-)
>
>Investigative Files
>
>John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved
(ALOT snipped for space)......Very impressive! Sorry, but I still believe in
him. That's cool that you have your opinion though.
nina
MC.
rjr...@aol.comzyxqyzx (RJRSJ1) wrote:
> >Investigative Files
> >
> >John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved
>
> (ALOT snipped for space)......Very impressive! Sorry, but I still believe in
> him. That's cool that you have your opinion though.
I'm at a total loss to understand how anyone can believe in him when he
has been so thoroughly busted and exposed as a proven fake -- but you're
entitled to your opinion, too.
RJRSJ1
I don't know either - I did see him live and he read a couple directly in front
of me.....seemed very genuine to me. But....to each their own I guess.
Rosifer
wrote:
>zalzon wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>
>It would be lot more convincing if it were live.
John Edward has done it live, yet I'm still not convinced.
> They tape about three
>or four (or more) hours per one hour air time. What you see is heavily
>edited to make him look good.
What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the quality.
What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong, but the times
he gets something spot-on.
Like this;
"EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
with cigarettes?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
-- was this the wrong brand?
CALLER: Yeah."
You can find the whole transcript here;
http://www.nytix.com/TVShows/NewYork/JohnEdward/transcripts/
>The studio also has people planted outside to listen to the audience
>members before they come in. Once inside, there are microphones
>everywhere. The long wait before the taping starts gives them even more
>information.
This is far more interesting and would explain a lot.
Do you have any evidence that he is using any form of 'hot reading'?
>People talk while they're waiting. "I'll ask about dead uncle Harry"
>says one audience member to another. That gets sent to 'psychic' in
>waiting. This provides information that the fraud can use once he is
>out on stage.
The problem I have with this is the same that I have for many
conspiracy theories.
The more conspirators there are, the more likely it is that the truth
will get out.
If he is miking the audience up before they go to air, surely someone,
a sound engineer, a stagehand, or anyone connected with the show,
would be able to supply some proof that this is happening, wouldn't
they?
Surely sceptics could plant a few people in the audience to start
talking about non-existent people who had 'passed over', and then if
this false information was used by John Edward, you would have a
smoking gun, and the whole thing could be laid to rest, so to speak.
What a coup for sceptics that would be!
Why haven't they done so?
>A good 'expose' may be found here.
>
>http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/2003/VOID0509.htm
It's hardly an expose, it is more like a series of guesses and
assumptions.
Rosifer
m II
Rosifer wrote:
>>A good 'expose' may be found here.
>>
>>http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/2003/VOID0509.htm
>
>
> It's hardly an expose, it is more like a series of guesses and
> assumptions.
I'm guessing you don't want to hear how the Texans killed Kennedy then...
mike
Een kat in het nauw maakt rare sprongen.
Happy Dog
> I've heard many skeptics say that their shows are heavily edited which
> is fair enough. Still it seems unlikely that the could stumble upon
> specific, often private, information on a person just by cold reading.
But the reality is that cold readers do this regularly without claiming any
psychic ability.
> I've heard that Derek Acorah offered to meet renound skeptic Randi on
> neutral ground to prove/disprove his abilities. But Randi did not
> want to meet on neutral ground insisting that he have total control of
> the experiment.
You heard wrong. Read the challenge rules at www.randi.org/challenge.
Apparently, Acorah couldn't.
le moo
Happy Dog
> What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the quality.
>
> What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong, but the times
> he gets something spot-on.
>
> Like this;
>
> "EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
> with cigarettes?
>
> CALLER: Yes.
>
> EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
> -- was this the wrong brand?
>
> CALLER: Yeah."
A 50% chance. Big deal.
> Surely sceptics could plant a few people in the audience to start
> talking about non-existent people who had 'passed over', and then if
> this false information was used by John Edward, you would have a
> smoking gun, and the whole thing could be laid to rest, so to speak.
Sure. The believers would instantly be converted. Not. There is plenty
of evidence that psychic frauds use hot reading methods. Read "The Faith
Healers".
le moo
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
<esa...@adelphia.noidonthinkso> wrote:
>fake
>
Sorry, Zinc-comedian needs more proof than THAT<g>
(But agree with you - I am, like you, not of the gullible masses.
There is a saying that there is one born every minute - and they are
the reason people like me and you take them on in this forum)
Ambrose
"zalzon" <zalzon...@zalll.com> wrote in message
news:103d40p8g1ab7el6l...@4ax.com...
I suppose the skeptic movement might have value (in India where psychic
con artists are a major economic force) but in America where Ponzi schemes
and Pyramid schemes rake in billions and illegal drug trade rakes in tens
of billions, a few charlatans getting rich doing psychic readings is a low
priority.
On the other hand skeptics and so-called skeptics forums are basically
also methods of making money for the skeptics. They themselves are
charlatans, particularly when while they claim they are doing it for the
public good, when they are really skeptics as a way of getting rich
themselves.
After congress went after con-artist mediums in the 20's and passed the
laws outlawing prognosticators and fortune telling, it was academics who
were studying peripheral forms of physics who began complaining that they
were being kept from doing research by laws which threatened to outlaw even
child's toys like Ouija boards. Psychic research began again in earnest, in
the 1930's at Stanford and Duke, but to most of the public all psychic's
were considered bogus until the 1960's when the counter culture and drug
culture created a revival of interest in the occult. Multi-cultural forces
were soon demanding laws against religious discrimination no longer include
mescaline eating Native American groups, and following that parasitic
cultural elements noted for fortune telling and psychic readings as a
livelihood, such as Romany Gypsies and certain Mexican American immigrants
and various African American elements began pushing for the removal of laws
against psychic reading on the basis that it was culturally, religiously and
racially discriminatory.
On a personal basis I've worked around a lot of magicians and night club
psychic types. Not my favorite people in show business.
It was also in the 1960's that Doug Henning and David Copperfield and a
few other recreated a revived form of magic called illusion, and former
street performers Like Harry Anderson and Penn and Teller and some of the
more old fashioned types--the dozen cockatiels hidden in the folds of the
tux types-- began doing shows in Las Vegas but since television made seeing
magicians ordinary, they have never really seen the good times return.
As for the TV psychics, I think it's all but impossible to judge
anything on TV because with modern filmic techniques and radio technology
anything can be faked, but on the neutral ground where some have been
tested, the criteria of a what is a cold reading, can't really explain many
of these psychics do. Cold readings, the best of which are brittle and
difficult to sustain. I'm not saying that the people on TV are really
psychic, but the studies being done in a number of university studies do
suggest some sort of mathematically provable effect, at least in the area of
psycho-kinesis, and precognition.
I think most of us are disturbed by the idea of precognition because it
suggests that our reality isn't fixed in a direct linear logical fashion,
the way the emotional mind demands for us to feel a sense of security within
our everyday universe. It's a bit like being told that someone can turn
gravity on and off and that any moment we might fly off into space.
When I was in psy-war program I had opportunity to work with people who
were on government psychic programs, such as remote viewing. Supposedly
congress cut the funding for such programs but don't kid yourself. Their
still being funded. The most interesting studies I saw were of people with
some sort of ability to project some kind of electro-magnetic energy that
could, even at a considerable distance, cause another person to go into
heart arrhythmia. I wont say I saw anyone killed in such an experiment, but
I've heard of it, and I've read--bad as my Russian is--Soviet studies of
similar techniques.
What does this have to do with people claiming to talk to the dead? I
don't know. I'm not religious but most of the conservative protestants I
know say that having anything to do with astrology and or psychics is
dangerous and evil. I'm not really sure who the audience for these TV guys
is unless it's like the TV psychics that were all over TV in Russia shortly
after the fall of the wall.
I think there's a lot show business involved but the same is with the
skeptics.
The spookiest part of this story to me comes from a woman I know who
works with survivors of child sexual abuse. At the top of the donors for the
false memory foundations, and the groups who fund defense for parents and
others accused of sexually abusing children are skeptics groups. Why? I
honestly don't know, but the several of the most prominent skeptics groups
including names you would know have been involved in attacking research on
child sexual abuse.
Ciscop(I believe is the group) has also been linked with various
so-called satanic groups at least one of which was implicated in a child
sexual abuse ring. I know this because I was one of the Army interrogators
in a case in the eighties concerning a high ranking officer who was
identified as a "Satanist." And one of the publishers of one of the main
skeptic magazines was listed by Interpol as an agent for a satanic group
operating out of Switzerland.
Lastly, concerns the veracity of the most famous skeptic, former escape
artist James Randi. The problem with James Randi and Penn Gillette is that
their so-called philosophical stance on skepticism is basically a show
business routine without much serious underlying veracity. Randi makes his
offers and claims, but when checked out he repeatedly stalls and avoids any
situation wherein he might get skunked by a mentalist or someone with
slight of hand skills that would embarrass him, so I resist using Randi's
criteria for determining what is real or fake because Mr. Randi is a man who
has a clear monetary agenda.
Actually I'm pretty amazed that no one in the media has given popular
psychic-skeptic Randi a thorough going over. I do know that Randi took up
his lucrative skeptic job when his escape artist skills began to fail him.
And it was at a time when even in the hinterlands small theaters had given
up vaudeville shows and most magicians were considered dead weight on show
business bills, below jugglers and ventriloquists. But using skepticism as a
cottage industry isn't Randi's only avocation. In England, he was
investigated for propositioning young boys.
A girlfriend once talked me into attending a lecture and slideshow of
New Age oddball David Icke, who spent at least five minutes of the program
playing a tape of James Randi talking to some young boys about how he wanted
to show them his nine inch penis. It was pretty gross, and at the time I was
confused as to what it had to do with Icke's curious theories about the
queen of England being a blood drinking reptile. But when I did some
checking on my own, and contacted my journalist ex-wife, my ex, after
considerable effort, discovered that Mr. Randi, has friends in very high
places who keep his peccadilloes from getting him in trouble.
In summation: what does this have to do with TV psychic John Edward etc?
I don't know. My impression was that the two main TV psychics were gay, but
since my gaydar stinks I'm probably wrong. Not that that has anything to do
with anything, but in our sex obsessed world it is just another piece of the
puzzle. I just know that whatever is going on, is a lot more complicated
than one group claiming to talk to the dead, and another group claiming to
be serving the public by exposing phony psychics.
Ambrose
AllSeeingEye
So you are saying that there is a major trend of people buring their
relatives with smokes at the moment...???
Think about it!
Its like saying... "you won the lottery last weekend..." (At a 50% chance of
the phsycic getting it right, it might be worth playing! instead of the
current odds of some 14x8:1)
"Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:uKA1c.16978$qA2.9...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Steve O
> Hi,
> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>
> My first inclination is to believe they are just 'cold reading' the
> person. But I don't see them cold reading very much, especially Derek
> Acorah. Also, they seem to get details which could not possibly have
> been obtained just by cold reading. How is this possible?
Hot reading.
>
> I've heard that Derek Acorah offered to meet renound skeptic Randi on
> neutral ground to prove/disprove his abilities. But Randi did not
> want to meet on neutral ground insisting that he have total control of
> the experiment. If true, then such skeptics are guilty of fraud in
> the same way they accuse so-called psychics of being frauds. Their
> only end goal ends up being debunking rather than a genuine search for
> credibility.
Derek Acorah looks ridiculous.
He has the annoying habit of turning around to listen to comments made by
his 'contacts' , as if they were standing in the room behind him.
Besides, why do they all have to stand behind him?
Why not in front, or to the side?
Sorry, Derek, but you're not convincing anyone with that tired old act.
As for Randi's unwillingness to meet a claimant on neutral and uncontrolled
ground, I thought the reason why he wouldn't want to do that was fairly
obvious.
Any claimant could set up a 'hit' in an uncontrolled environment and Randi
wouldn't be able to negate it.
So you really should think a little more carefully before you accuse others
of fraud.
Steve O
> zalzon wrote:
>
>
>> Hi,
>> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>
> It would be lot more convincing if it were live.
It would be as boring as hell if it were live.
It would also be quite embarassing for the psychic.
There are one or two psychics who have been foolish enough to go on live
television, and they invariably end up falling flat on their arses.
I've seen some who were doing so badly on live t.v. I almost felt sorry for
them.
Steve O
>
> Surely sceptics could plant a few people in the audience to start
> talking about non-existent people who had 'passed over', and then if
> this false information was used by John Edward, you would have a
> smoking gun, and the whole thing could be laid to rest, so to speak.
>
> What a coup for sceptics that would be!
>
> Why haven't they done so?
What on earth are you talking about?
It's been done hundreds of times, not necessarily on the Edwards show, but
at plenty of other psychic meetings.
Lots of people have stood up and fed crap to a psychic - I've done it myself
on several occasions.
Maybe no one can be bothered to do it to Edwards.
What's the point if it's been done hundreds of times elsewhere before and on
different people, with both more or less claimed ability than Edwards?
Bobby D. Bryant
> On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 02:44:13 GMT, m II <ohmwork...@spots.ca> wrote:
>
>>The studio also has people planted outside to listen to the audience
>>members before they come in. Once inside, there are microphones
>>everywhere. The long wait before the taping starts gives them even more
>>information.
>
> This is far more interesting and would explain a lot.
>
> Do you have any evidence that he is using any form of 'hot reading'?
>
>>People talk while they're waiting. "I'll ask about dead uncle Harry"
>>says one audience member to another. That gets sent to 'psychic' in
>>waiting. This provides information that the fraud can use once he is out
>>on stage.
>
> The problem I have with this is the same that I have for many conspiracy
> theories.
>
> The more conspirators there are, the more likely it is that the truth
> will get out.
>
> If he is miking the audience up before they go to air, surely someone, a
> sound engineer, a stagehand, or anyone connected with the show, would be
> able to supply some proof that this is happening, wouldn't they?
People have actually been caught at this, yet the shows go on.
--
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Bobby D. Bryant
> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
Here's a hint: you saw them on television.
John Griffin
The word "fraud" works better than "fake."
They aren't just pretending to be something they aren't.
They're trying to use that pretense as a means of scamming
desperate old ladies out of their life's savings.
JohnnyCJohnny
> "zalzon" <zalzon...@zalll.com>
>
> > I've heard many skeptics say that their shows are heavily edited which
> > is fair enough. Still it seems unlikely that the could stumble upon
> > specific, often private, information on a person just by cold reading.
>
> But the reality is that cold readers do this regularly without claiming any
> psychic ability.
That's a skeptic myth. Cold reading has its limitations, as prominent
skeptics like Dr. Ray Hyman have noted, there is only so much
information you can obtain (although some quite impressive) from the
cold reading gag. When, John Edward or other psychics give people
really specific information, like a favorite song, an inside joke, a
favorite food, it's hard to write it off just as cold reading. Yeah,
you can make a lot of assumptions about a person, but can you cold
read an inside joke within a family or something they discussed
shortly before the person died? The cold reading model doesn't cover
such specifics and is just a crutch used by skeptics to justify their
skeptical worldview.
JohnnyCJohnny
> zalzon wrote:
>
>
> > Hi,
> > I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
> > find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>
> It would be lot more convincing if it were live. They tape about three
> or four (or more) hours per one hour air time. What you see is heavily
> edited to make him look good.
>
> The studio also has people planted outside to listen to the audience
> members before they come in. Once inside, there are microphones
> everywhere. The long wait before the taping starts gives them even more
> information.
>
> People talk while they're waiting. "I'll ask about dead uncle Harry"
> says one audience member to another. That gets sent to 'psychic' in
> waiting. This provides information that the fraud can use once he is
> out on stage.
>
That's pure conjecture on the part of the person who wrote the
article, you state it as though it's fact. Why? Funny how "skeptics"
have such a hard time sticking to the facts. There is no evidence
that John Edward plants microphones to listen in on his audience
members (something made up by skeptics and not supported by any
evidence). There is also no evidence that people are planted outside
listening to audience member converstations. I've read completely
different accounts from people who went to a John Edward taping, they
said people weren't talking before the show and that the show started
promptly.
Please, if you're going to post the stuff you post, note that it is
conjecture and opinion, not supported by any real evidence. The one
explanation that I've come across that might explain how John Edward
comes up with his amazing information is that audience members arrange
for tickets up to one year in advance, and it is possible that John
Edward might have people collecting information on guests (hot
reading) during that lag time. That is a plausible explanation for
his amazing psychic skills, but yet unproven. It still doesn't
account for some of the really specific information that John Edward
comes up with, like a conversation someone had the night before they
came to the show or something they said to a loved one before they
passed, their favorite song, etc. That isn't public domain sort of
information. Also, if John Edward was using hot reading methods of
gathering information, why hasn't someone on his staff spilled the
beans? He must pay them very well not to go to the NY Post and spill
the beans. NY is one loudmouthed place, people aren't afraid to speak
their minds, yet noone has ever publicly accussed John Edward of being
a fraud?!? Curious.
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
wrote:
>Hi,
> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
It is not that difficult!
>
>My first inclination is to believe they are just 'cold reading' the
>person.
They are.
> But I don't see them cold reading very much, especially Derek
>Acorah. Also, they seem to get details which could not possibly have
>been obtained just by cold reading. How is this possible?
>
>I've heard many skeptics say that their shows are heavily edited which
It is!
>is fair enough.
>Still it seems unlikely that the could stumble upon
>specific, often private, information on a person just by cold reading.
They have ways and means - and very lucky guesses.
And what about their misses - nobody seems to remember them - they are
just too overwhelmed by the few and far between hits to notice.
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
to believe all that crap - they need to believe it.
Who do you think attends? Only those who have unfinished business with
someone who has died etc.
http://www.randi.org/jr/021502.html
A Film was made of this famous case
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127933/plotsummary
"Henriette Syndrome"
What follows is the first of a two-part article dealing with the
preliminary test of 10-year-old Natalia Lulova, the Russian girl who
applied for the JREF million-dollar prize. I want to prepare you for
properly evaluating this procedure, and to that end I will set up a
scenario that will provide a background for the psychological factors
involved, as well as some history.
I've often had to correct those who suggest that believers in the
supernatural "want to believe," and I suggest that it is more correct
to say that they "need to believe." Sometimes that need is
overwhelming, and it is very difficult to understand how otherwise
quite intelligent persons, blinded by their need, will disregard and
cancel out any and all evidence that is contrary to their view of a
situation that might otherwise threaten their comfort and/or security.
With my recent investigation of Miss Lulova, I obtained a perfect
example of this rejection of blatant evidence. Refer to
www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,199773,00.html and
you'll see a brief story on this matter. To prepare you for what
follows, I will acquaint you with a case known as The Tichborne
Claimant, famous in the UK. Here we find many similar elements, where
responsible and sane individuals saw the plentiful evidence,
considered it, and then came to a ridiculous conclusion that boggles
the rational mind. We are repeating history here, and encountering
human situations that begin to sound familiar. It all began in 1852.
Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne (1829-1854) was the heir to a
sizeable estate and fortune. His distinguished family, which dated
back to two centuries before the Norman Conquest of the British Isles,
sent him off in 1853 on an extended ocean voyage (a frequent and
popular cure among aristocrats for improper behavior) to recover from
his disappointment that he was not allowed to marry his cousin
Katherine. He resigned his commission as an officer in the Sixth
Dragoons, and set sail for South America in March, arrived there and
crossed the Andes, and left Rio de Janeiro headed for Australia on
April 20, 1854, aboard the ship Bella, after which he disappeared -
along with the ship and everyone else. Some wreckage from the ship was
recovered, it was properly decided that the presumptive heir to the
baronetcy was lost at sea, and would not be returning. Lloyd's of
London agreed, and settled the insurance claims.
In 1862 the baronetcy and estates passed to Roger's younger brother
Alfred. The mother, Dowager Lady Henriette Felicité Tichborne, had
firmly refused to believe that Roger was dead. When her husband Sir
James died in 1862 she set about taking advertisements in periodicals
all over the world from South America and Mexico to Australia,
desperately seeking to find Roger. It was made very evident in the ads
that she was desperate, and a substantial reward was offered for the
information she sought. Then Alfred died and left her as the only
living member of the family.
In 1865 a letter arrived that appeared to justify her faith. It was
from an agency in Australia who averred that they had discovered her
son, now working as a butcher in Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales.
(Incidentally, two historical accounts of this matter have Wagga Wagga
both in Victoria, and in Queensland. Wrong, and wrong.)
Lady Henriette, to the astonishment of everyone involved, immediately
and eagerly accepted the claimant as her son, despite the fact that
there were excellent reasons to suspect fraud here. For examples,
Roger had been a slight, narrow-chested man who weighed 125 pounds
when he vanished, spoke fluent French, and had a tattoo on his left
arm; the claimant was anything but slight, weighed 280 pounds, spoke
not a word of French, and had no tattoos at all. And that was just for
starters.
The rest of the family found firm evidence that the claimant was
actually Arthur Orton (1834-1898) the son of a butcher in Wapping,
London. Orton had lived in Australia, but that was about all that
might have connected him with Roger. When the family brought suit
against Orton in 1871, his testimony clearly proved him to be an
imposter. He identified "his" school as Winchester; it was
Stoneyhurst. He spoke of "his" grandfather, who Roger had never met,
and referred to "his" service in the army: Roger had served in the
cavalry. But Lady Henriette had insisted that these discrepancies were
forgivable: "He confuses everything as in a dream," she said.
Henriette died before the trial got to court. Eventually, Orton was
convicted of fraud and perjury. He was sent to prison for 14 years,
and after serving ten years, he was released and immediately sold his
story to a newspaper for Ł3,000. He died a few years later, and his
gravestone was inscribed: "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne; born 5
January 1829; died 1 April 1898.
One must wonder whether that death-date is significant....
Consider: Lady Henriette was an educated, intelligent woman. She
should have been able to see through this outrageous imposture, but
she needed this man to be her long-lost son. She overlooked, ignored,
and dismissed the very firm and obvious evidence that belied Orton's
claim. She denied the reasoning and the appeals of her friends and
family because she desperately needed her delusion, her fantasy, to be
true. No one, no matter how well-respected or well-informed, could
shake her belief. I think it is evident that she was honestly
self-deluded, not dishonest in any respect. It is astonishing what
otherwise rational people can and will do to maintain a chimera.
Later:
Remember the "Henriette Syndrome"- the overpowering need by some
people to accept and believe something preposterous, and the ability
to ignore and dismiss the contrary evidence, no matter what it's
quantity, nor how strong it is? Well, it appears that the Dutch have
an excellent saying that expresses it well...
Wat baten kaars en bril,
Als de uil niet zien en wil.
The candle and glasses are useless,
If the owl doesn't want to see.
On 4 Mar 2004 12:55:30 GMT, John Griffin <thathi...@yahooie.com>
wrote:
That is pathetic and John Edward and people like him should be
prosecuted!!!!!!!
!
>
Deborah G. Buckner
"JohnnyCJohnny" <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote in message
news:cd2ccfd9.0403...@posting.google.com...
>It still doesn't
> account for some of the really specific information that John Edward
> comes up with, like a conversation someone had the night before they
> came to the show or something they said to a loved one before they
> passed, their favorite song, etc.
I can't speak to the psychics mentioned in this topic, but I do believe some
people have such powers. A friend recommended someone to me, and I had a
reading last year, over the telephone from half a country away. (The
psychic held a letter I had written during the reading). It was similar to
the "crossing over" type of reading. Certain relatives came through in such
a way I was certain who they were. One told me to ask my mother about her
pet chicken (a family story I didn't know, but my mother immediately
recalled the pet she had as a ten-year-old). Then the psychic felt the
presence of "a man who passed in his 70s from something in his chest." The
previous year, I had lost a good friend who was 75, dying of emphysema. His
comments to me, passed through the psychic, were directly finishing a
conversation he and I had had upon first learning he was ill.
This psychic knew nothing about me and couldn't even see me. Also, I had
seen the Saturday Night Live spoof of John Edward and how the audience
members can sometimes feed information, so I was very guarded in my
responses to the psychic's comments and ddn't reveal anything. I was
impressed with the reading and felt the experience was real. So real, that
I don't know if I ever want to do it again.
Deb
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Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
<d...@thebucknerhomethetrash.com> wrote:
>
>"JohnnyCJohnny" <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote in message
>news:cd2ccfd9.0403...@posting.google.com...
>>It still doesn't
>> account for some of the really specific information that John Edward
>> comes up with, like a conversation someone had the night before they
>> came to the show or something they said to a loved one before they
>> passed, their favorite song, etc.
>
>I can't speak to the psychics mentioned in this topic, but I do believe some
>people have such powers. A friend recommended someone to me,
Maybe your friend had a conversation with the "psychic" before you
phoned him.
Let this "psychic" contact me and let us see if he can convince me.
That is not an unreasonable request!
>and I had a
>reading last year, over the telephone from half a country away. (The
>psychic held a letter I had written during the reading).
And the fact that he was holding that letter means........
> It was similar to
>the "crossing over" type of reading. Certain relatives came through in such
>a way I was certain who they were. One told me to ask my mother about her
>pet chicken (a family story I didn't know, but my mother immediately
>recalled the pet she had as a ten-year-old). Then the psychic felt the
>presence of "a man who passed in his 70s from something in his chest." The
If he is realy that good why is he so vague?
He inaccurate about his age, " in his 70s" does not do it for me, he
did not identify the person(he did not even "know" that it was a
friend) and was vague about what he died from.
>previous year, I had lost a good friend who was 75, dying of emphysema. His
>comments to me, passed through the psychic, were directly finishing a
>conversation he and I had had upon first learning he was ill.
>
>This psychic knew nothing about me and couldn't even see me.
Ah, but he held that letter in his hand - that explains
everything??????
>Also, I had
>seen the Saturday Night Live spoof of John Edward and how the audience
>members can sometimes feed information, so I was very guarded in my
>responses to the psychic's comments and ddn't reveal anything. I was
>impressed with the reading and felt the experience was real. So real, that
>I don't know if I ever want to do it again.
OK give me a try then - seriously. Why do I have this feeling that
nothing will come of this!
I am cc'ing this za.humour, if they want to flame me for that then so
be it - I just think this is so funny! A lot of fun can be had with
this thread. Bu that is up to you and you and......
Mike Combs
>
> > I've heard that Derek Acorah offered to meet renound skeptic Randi on
> > neutral ground to prove/disprove his abilities. But Randi did not
> > want to meet on neutral ground insisting that he have total control of
> > the experiment.
If it's unreasonable for Randi to insist on having control of the
experiment, then who's going to control against methods of cheating?
I don't think it's so much that Randi insists that /he/ always be in control
as that /some/ kind of controls be in place. I've heard him many times
agree to testing that he's not even present for, provided that people he
considers trustworthy and knowledgeable about possible methods of cheating
are there to keep controls against such in place.
For some reason, it's the point where controls to guard against possible
cheating are insisted upon that the psychics seem to suddenly lose interest
in going for the million.
--
Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the
best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the
Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely.
Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is
"somewhere else entirely."
Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"
Smoot
wrote:
>
>
>zalzon wrote:
>
>
>> Hi,
>> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>
>It would be lot more convincing if it were live. They tape about three
>or four (or more) hours per one hour air time. What you see is heavily
>edited to make him look good.
>
>The studio also has people planted outside to listen to the audience
>members before they come in. Once inside, there are microphones
>everywhere. The long wait before the taping starts gives them even more
>information.
>
>People talk while they're waiting. "I'll ask about dead uncle Harry"
>says one audience member to another. That gets sent to 'psychic' in
>waiting. This provides information that the fraud can use once he is
>out on stage.
People undoubtedly talk while they are waiting, but those attending
Edward's tapings are sent letters in advance asking them not to talk
to anyone about dead relatives while at the studio, even when in line
waiting to get into the theater. (I know someone who attended a
screening.) The producers don't want any accusations of this type and
do what they can to make sure not to give any ammunition for the
psychic haters.
There are a lot of lies out there about John Edward.
Rebecca
Smoot
wrote:
>Four decades later the foxy sisters confessed how they had produced the
>noises by trickery (Nickell 1994), but meanwhile others discovered they
>too could be "mediums" (those who supposedly communicate with the dead).
Here's at least one false thing in this so-called "Investigative
Files". (I'm sure there are plenty of other mistatements.) Only one
Fox sister, Margaret, recanted and she did it for cash while facing
financial problems. She later retracted the confession. Her sister
never wavered in her claims that the communications were real.
Rebecca
Smoot
I've seen him live also and he didn't do "cold readings". He came up
with a lot of specific information quickly with not help from those he
was reading.
Rebecca
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
wrote:
Whether anything you say about him is true or not is one matter, I
know that he is a fraud by just watching him. He is is to vague for
starters.
RJRSJ1
>to believe all that crap - they need to believe it.
>Who do you think attends? Only those who have unfinished business with
>someone who has died etc.
I would feel more sorry for the people that strongly think they can never
finish their business with loved ones who have passed.
zalzon
wrote:
>50% chance !?!
Its obviously not a 50% chance.
Now how does Derek Acorah and John Edward figure this out? The idea
that some have put forward (i.e. they eves drop on conversations
before the show) does not make any sense. Trying to accurately fit
idle gossip into context 1 hour before the show does not sound
plausible to me.
What is "hot reading" supposed to be?
Rosifer
Well, this seems to clear it all up then.
Any proof at all?
Rosifer
Rosifer
wrote:
>"Rosifer" <no...@nowhere.com>
>
>> What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the quality.
>>
>> What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong, but the times
>> he gets something spot-on.
>>
>> Like this;
>>
>> "EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
>> with cigarettes?
>>
>> CALLER: Yes.
>>
>> EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
>> -- was this the wrong brand?
>>
>> CALLER: Yeah."
>
>A 50% chance. Big deal.
While there is 100% chance of you being a innumerate moron.
Rosifer
Yammer
> NY is one loudmouthed place, people aren't afraid to speak
> their minds, yet noone has ever publicly accussed John Edward of being
> a fraud?!? Curious.
He's been both accused AND accussed in South Park's episode about him,
"The Biggest Douche In the Universe."
Rosifer
<jo...@jvz.co.za> wrote:
>On Wed, 3 Mar 2004 20:35:21 -0700, "nina"
><esa...@adelphia.noidonthinkso> wrote:
>
>>fake
>>
>Sorry, Zinc-comedian needs more proof than THAT<g>
Yes, it really is rather impertinent for him to ask for proof, isn't
it?
Rosifer
Rosifer
wrote:
>zalzon <zalzon...@zalll.com> wrote:
I love the smell of false indignation in the morning.
Rosifer
su-t...@webtv.net
Sylvia Brown appears to be real.
Some of the others don't appear to be real, that is, to give good
readings & volunteer a lot of detailed information quickly.
Susan, Su_Texas my opinions
Steve O
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 10:10:02 -0000, "AllSeeingEye" <sp...@spam.spam>
> wrote:
>
> What is "hot reading" supposed to be?
>
m II
Steve O wrote:
>>What is "hot reading" supposed to be?
>>
>
> The opposite of cold reading.
It's not the opposite. It's only a matter of degree! <g>
mike
--
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
/ /\ / /\ / /\ / /\ / /\ / /\ / /\ / /
/ /\ \/ /\ ohmwork...@spots.ca \/ /\ \/ /
/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/ \/_/
..let the cat out to reply..
JohnnyCJohnny
I have also visited some reputable psychics in my area and they gave
me some very specific and correct information about my life and my
relatives, stuff that was way too specific to write off as simple cold
reading. One of them sensed that my father had passed recently and
gave me some very accurate information about his life. All in all, I
was very impressed.
John Griffin
If you could smell impuissant cretin, you'd gag yourself.
Be careful...your dumb remark could leave the impression that
you don't understand that Edward and his low-life ilk are all
frauds. I wouldn't have accused you of being that stupid, but
if you insist...
MC.
su-t...@webtv.net wrote:
> Sylvia Brown appears to be real.
Oh yeah?
++++
King of the Paranormal
What's up with the Larry King Show's outrageous promotion of UFOs,
psychics, and spiritualists?
Chris Mooney; July 31, 2003
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Broadcast on CNN, the July 1, 2003 installment of "Larry King Live" was
a sight to behold. The program, in King's words, explored "the
incredible events of 56 years ago at Roswell, New Mexico." What most
likely crashed at Roswell in 1947 was a government spy balloon, but the
panel of guests assembled on King's show preferred a more lurid version
of events. Jesse Marcel, Jr., son of a Roswell intelligence officer,
claimed that just after the crash, his father showed him bits of debris
that "came from another civilization." Glenn Dennis, who worked at a
Roswell funeral home at the time, said a military officer called him to
ask about the availability of small caskets (i.e., for dead aliens).
Later Denis, obviously a UFO enthusiast, observed out of nowhere that
the pyramids in Egypt had recently been "[shut down] for three or four
days and no tourists going out there on account of the sightings."
King's program didn't merely advance the notion that an alien spacecraft
crashed at Roswell in 1947. It also hawked the DVD version of a recent
Sci-Fi Channel documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence,"
clips of which appeared throughout the hour. A breathy and
sensationalizing take on the events of 1947, "The Roswell Crash" first
appeared as a tie-in for Sci-Fi's fictional miniseries Taken, a Steven
Spielberg production tracing the impact of UFO abductions on three
generations of American families. Other Taken tie-ins that thoroughly
blur the line between fact and fiction include a documentary titled
Abduction Diaries, a Roper Poll finding that Americans are ready for the
discovery of extraterrestrial life, and even the launching of the
Coalition for Freedom of Information, an advocacy group devoted to
unearthing classified government documents about aliens. Sure enough,
King's July 1 guests included two people with Sci-Fi ties: Leslie Kean,
a left-wing journalist turned UFO investigator who works with the
Coalition for Freedom of Information, and Dr. William Doleman, a
University of New Mexico archaeologist contracted by Sci-Fi to excavate
the Roswell crash site. Doleman admitted to King that his dig had not
yet yielded any definitive evidence, but added that the "results" of his
analysis will be aired on Sci-Fi in October--as opposed to, say, being
published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Sci-Fi is an entertainment network, and can arguably air whatever it
wants, including pseudo-documentaries hyping the Roswell myth. But Larry
King is different. King regularly interviews senators, former
presidents, and heads of state. One would expect him to hew to basic
standards of journalistic rigor and balance. On July 1, however, King
presided over a thoroughly biased discussion of the Roswell question
that eschewed historical accuracy and gave a big boost to Sci-Fi's
paranormalist marketing strategies. One Roswell expert, New Mexico
physicist and mathematician Dave Thomas, observed to me by e-mail that
King's program failed entirely to explain why Project Mogul, a secret
government program to develop spy balloons, counts as such a strong
candidate for the source of the Roswell incident.
Does CNN, the "most trusted name in news," take responsibility for the
factual content and balance of "Larry King Live"? This article--a
double-length installment of my monthly "Doubt and About"
column--attempts to answer that question. After all, King's July 1
Roswell program was no aberration. King has hosted uncritical shows
about UFOs in the past. Not only that: He probably devotes more air time
to spiritualist mediums like John Edward, Sylvia Brown, and Rosemary
Altea than to America's UFO obsessives. No other serious cable news
anchor treats the paranormal in the consistently promotional way that
Larry King does, which more resembles the approach of a Montel Williams
or Jerry Springer than that of a trusted journalist.
In researching this article, I interviewed four leading skeptics who
have appeared on "Larry King Live," seeking their perceptions of why the
program consistently promotes the paranormal, sometimes without airing
any critical perspective at all. I also attempted to contact King or his
producers to seek a response to the skeptics' criticisms. My request,
however, went unmet. As a result, I have been left with no choice but to
privilege the skeptical perspective, which views "Larry King Live" as a
depressing example of the way that marketing values and the demand for
viewers can trump journalistic responsibility. This process leads
otherwise trustworthy media outlets to inflate the reputations of
psychics and promoters of the paranormal because they draw in hordes of
credulous viewers. CNN may be a respected news network, but in its
irresponsible presentation of paranormal topics and themes, "Larry King
Live" belies and compromises that reputation.
On CNN's website, Larry King's impressive personal page presents the
sixty-nine year old anchor as a true lion of journalism. King, the page
notes, hosted the famous 1993 debate between Ross Perot and Al Gore over
the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, which broke CNN records by
drawing in some 16 million viewers. King also conducted "award-winning
jailhouse interviews" with Karla Faye Tucker and Mike Tyson, and has won
journalism accolades ranging from the Allen H. Neuharth Award for
Excellence in Journalism to the George Foster Peabody Award for
Excellence in Broadcasting. Indeed, over the years King has conducted
interviews with pretty much anybody who's anybody, celebrities and
politicians alike. Some top tier interviewees include Jimmy Carter and
Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin, and Tony Blair and
Margaret Thatcher.
You might be surprised to hear that someone so decorated could be guilty
of repeatedly treating a certain topic--the paranormal--in a fashion
that betrays virtually all journalistic standards. If you cast a glance
back at King's various shows over the years, however, you will find
titles like "Is the End of the World at Hand?", "Paranormal Warfare - A
Secret Military Power?, "Is Exorcism Real?", and "Are Some Persons
Programmed for UFO Contact?" interspersed with more serious programs.
Sometimes these shows have included interviews with a skeptical figure.
But King frequently devotes entire programs to paranormal topics with
nary a skeptic to be seen, as was the case with the July 1 Roswell
program. In fact, a study by Matthew Nisbet found that even in one case
where King included skeptics on his program, these doubters were granted
dramatically fewer total seconds of speaking time than the
paranormalists.
Possibly the most troublesome aspect of King's promotion of the
paranormal involves spiritualism, the contacting-the-dead movement that
began in the19th century with the "rappings" of the Fox Sisters and
evolved into the televised psychic mediumship seen today on programs
like Crossing Over with John Edward (a Sci-Fi production that originated
after the channel's president saw Edward on "Larry King Live"). Prior to
his July 1 Roswell program, King's most recent foray into the paranormal
was a May 16 interview with popular psychic Sylvia Browne, whose website
attests that she is "truly on a mission from God," and who frequently
dispenses explicit health advice despite her lack of medical
qualifications. An excerpt from the show transcript demonstrates just
how low these programs can go, and how willingly King plays along:
KING: Do you believe in angels?
SYLVIA BROWNE, PSYCHIC: Oh, yes.
KING: What are they?
BROWNE: They're actually the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that was made by God to
protect us. I mean, they're not...
KING: Bad people have angels?
BROWNE: You know, bad people, I've never seen bad people have angels.
That's interesting you should ask that, because I've never seen angels
around bad people.
KING: Do they look like the drawings of angels?
BROWNE: Yes.
KING: They do?
BROWNE: And I didn't think they had wings. I thought that was just some
stupid...
KING: Sylvia, Sylvia, come on. You see people with wings?
BROWNE: Yes. I used to tell people they didn't have wings, Larry. And
then I saw one with wings, and then I had to go back up on stage and
say, I'm sorry, I lied. They have wings.
KING: Why do you see them and I don't?
BROWNE: I don't know. You probably could see them if you wanted to. You
have four of them around you.
KING: To what, to protect?
BROWNE: To protect.
KING: We have four them around us?
BROWNE: You have four.
KING: I have four.
BROWNE: You have four. Some people have two.
KING: I'm a good guy?
BROWNE: Well, that's it.
KING: I've got connections, right?
BROWNE: You've got connections.
Browne appeared alone for the entire hour. Throughout much of the show,
King allowed her to take phone calls and attempt to contact listeners'
dead loved ones--a process greatly facilitated by a palpable will to
believe on the part of these desperate, bereaved callers. A Nexis search
shows that King has invited Browne on his show on several other
occasions during the last few years. In fact, Browne has repeatedly
promised, on the air, to allow magician James Randi to test her psychic
abilities in a rigorously controlled setting, but she has not yet
submitted to the test. On his website Randi maintains a"Sylvia Browne
Clock" that keeps track of how many days it has been since Browne
accepted his challenge. King, however, has shown little interest in
learning whether Browne can actually do what she claims.
And if King's promotion of Browne rankles, it's just the beginning.
Another psychic superstar of King's program is John Edward, who has
appeared repeatedly, both alone and with other guests (including
occasional skeptics). As CSICOP paranormal investigator Joe Nickell and
others have documented, the techniques used by Edward to convince "Larry
King Live" callers that he can contact the deceased turn out to be quite
mundane. Using a process called "cold reading," Edwards essentially goes
fishing for information. Talking quickly, he throws out common causes of
death and other vague data, and then waits for callers to take the bait
and suggest he's on to something. Edward also asks questions, makes
educated guesses, and feeds off reactions for more information. His
statements are often wrong, and when they're right it's only in a vague
way. But the willingness of callers to seize upon Edward's "hits" and
ignore his "misses" makes these antics seem believable.
King's uncritical presentation of spiritualists like Browne and Edward,
as well as James Van Praagh and Rosemary Altea, reached such a pitch in
1999 that two leading skeptics, CSICOP's Paul Kurtz and Joe Nickell,
sent a complaint letter to King and one of his producers. "We must
protest," wrote Kurtz and Nickell, "your repeated promotion of
'spiritualism'...without providing a contrary view," continuing:
One must wonder if people would really want the touted "communications"
from their deceased loved ones if they knew the facts about
spiritualism's history of fraud and deception, or even that the
techniques used by mediums on your several shows are well known and
easily discredited.
If spirit communications are not genuine, we are often asked,
nevertheless what harm is there in the solace provided by the pretense?
The answer is that falsehoods have consequences. Magician Harry Houdini
catalogued many of them--"the suffering, losses, misfortunes, crimes and
atrocities"--of spiritualistic deception. We have personally witnessed
the consequences to people's self-respect when they realized their most
sacred beliefs had been manipulated and trivialized.
Kurtz and Nickell concluded by noting that while "we do not advocate
censorship, we do invite fair-minded journalism."
According to Kurtz, the letter resulted in a telephone "shouting match"
between Kurtz and King's producers, who defended their presentations on
the grounds that, in Kurtz's words, "everybody knows it's
entertainment." Kurtz disagreed, explaining to me that since Larry King
has a reputation as one of TV journalism's leading figures, even his
treatments of the paranormal will inevitably be taken as "authoritative
and newsworthy." Indeed, it's almost as if the sheen from King's
interviews with senators and former presidents rubs off on the
UFO-promoters, psychics, and quacks.
So what's going on at "Larry King Live"? Why are psychics, mediums, and
UFO believers permitted to speak without interruption to King's vast
audience? Among the skeptics I interviewed, all of whom have appeared at
one time or another on "Larry King Live," a consistent theme emerged:
That the quest for ratings is the only possible explanation for King's
journalistic transgressions. "Having the spiritualists on must be for
him very popular shows. Whatever he uses for feedback to tell him this,
it must really work. Otherwise he would drop it like a hot potato," said
Nickell. Magician James Randi was even more explicit: "This is a
marketing thing. They want sponsors, they will get sponsors and they
will keep sponsors if they put this kind of material on, because it
attracts viewers. That's the bottom line."
Michael Shermer, of Skeptic magazine, has also appeared on "Larry King
Live" and confirms the views of Kurtz, Nickell, and Randi. Of King's
presentation of the paranormal, Shermer notes: "I've actually asked
Larry about this. Specifically, 'Do you believe this stuff?' And he
said, 'For the most part, I'm a skeptic like you,'" recalls Shermer.
"And I've asked his producers, 'Why do you put this stuff on?' And they
said, 'Cause it gets great ratings, it's good television.'" Since
ratings inevitably drive the media's presentation of the paranormal,
Shermer argues, it's incumbent upon skeptics to create programs that
stand an equal chance of drawing large audiences. Shermer's own show,
"Exploring the Unknown," presented a skeptical perspective for 65
segments on the Fox Family Channel. And with Showtime's late night show
"Penn & Teller: Bullshit!", the Discovery Kids Channel's "Mystery
Hunters," and the Discovery Science Channel's "Critical Eye" (produced
with the help of CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer), the skeptical
perspective does seem to be finding its way onto television more
frequently than it did during the paranormal-obsessed 1990s.
Shermer's strategy certainly describes one way of combating the
paranormal messages spread on "Larry King Live" and other programs. But
should ratings alone dictate the treatment of the paranormal on a
television news network like CNN? Shermer opines that "Larry King is not
in the news department, he's in the entertainment department, so he's
not required to have any journalistic ethics, and he doesn't." But there
are problems with this response. For example, "Larry King Live" will
sometimes transition back and forth between news reporting and
paranormal "entertainment" within the course of the very same program.
When this happens, how are viewers supposed to tell the difference?
In any case, Shermer's recollection of his conversation with King and
his producers seems consistent with Kurtz's account of his own
interaction with King's producers. Still, I wanted to be sure these
first-hand accounts accurately represented the institutional view of
"Larry King Live." So I contacted King's publicist, Erin Sermeus,
identifying myself as a writer with the online version of Skeptical
Inquirer magazine. Sermeus returned my initial call, and in our
conversation I summarized for her the criticisms of "Larry King Live"
that I had been hearing from leading skeptics.
Besides noting--correctly--that shows devoted to psychics comprise only
a small percentage of total "Larry King Live" programming, Sermeus did
not provide much substantive response. However, said she would get back
to me in a few days with something more thorough. She never did. An
e-mail, a follow-up phone call, and a call to Sermeus's cell phone all
went unreturned. After waiting a week beyond my original article
deadline, I decided to go ahead with this piece without a formal
response from "Larry King Live." If this article presents a very
negative view of the show, it's partly because that was the only
viewpoint I actually heard.
Where does that leave things? If the past is any indication, we will
continue to see unbalanced presentations of paranormal topics on "Larry
King Live," sometimes with token skeptics included, sometimes not.
Barring a sudden change of heart at CNN, things will proceed as usual.
At this point, Michael Shermer's suggestion--that skeptics try to create
their own programs to get their messages into the media--does sound
pretty attractive. Granted, it basically concedes that skeptics have
lost the moral argument about proper journalistic practices. And yet,
these practices themselves are not set in stone. After all, who knows
how our culture's approach to the paranormal--both journalistic and
otherwise--will change?
We have already seen skeptic-friendly media programs. Perhaps one day
the skeptic movement will produce a media personality of sufficient
stature to appear on "Larry King Live" for a whole hour uninterrupted,
the way Sylvia Browne and John Edward currently do. Then maybe Larry and
the skeptic will exchange a few jokes at the expense of psychics and UFO
believers. Indeed, perhaps the skeptic will even ask King to repent for
his show's previous transgressions, and King will go along. An on-air
confession: Now that would make for great ratings.
MC.
> The Pet Psychic lady on the Animal Channel, appears to be real.
Oh yeah?
+++
Pet Mediums
In the popular imagination, animals, like their human counterparts, may
continue their existence after death, there being many reports of animal
apparitions. And since pets are loved and often regarded as members of a
family, it is not surprising that people occasionally experience
"visitations" from their departed animal friends just as they do their
human ones. However, these seem to have similar explanations to those of
other apparitional experiences. For example, some who hear a dog's
phantom bark or footsteps, or see (as one reported) "a shadow jump up on
the bed," do so just after rousing from sleep (Cohen 1984) and may thus
be having "waking dreams." These are common hallucinations that occur in
the twilight between being awake and asleep and exhibit content that
"may be related to the dreamer's current concerns" (Baker 1990).
Similarly, apparitions that are seen during wakefulness tend to occur
when one is tired, daydreaming (perhaps while performing routine work),
or the like (Nickell 2001a, 291-292).
With the advent of spiritualism--the belief that the dead can be
contacted--certain self-styled "mediums" began to offer themselves as
intermediaries with the spirit realm. Some produced bogus spirit
"materializations" and other physical phenomena, but these were
frequently exposed as tricks by investigators like magician Harry
Houdini. Today's mediums tend to limit themselves to purely "mental
phenomena," i.e., the use of "psychic ability" to obtain messages from
"the other side."
Such mediums--like James Van Praagh, John Edward, Rosemary Altea, George
Anderson, and Sylvia Browne--appear to rely largely on the old psychics'
standby, cold reading. In fact Edward (real name John MaGee Jr.) came to
mediumship as an erstwhile fortuneteller at psychic fairs and now styles
himself a "psychic medium." But on Dateline NBC he was caught cheating:
attempting to pass off some previously gained knowledge as spirit
revelation (Nickell 2001b).
Mediums like Edward and Van Praagh occasionally mention a pet--usually a
dog--in a reading. Given the Barnum effect (discussed earlier), this
usually gets a hit. For instance, on Larry King Live (February 26,
1999), Van Praagh told a caller: "I'm also picking up something on a
dog. So I don't know why, but I'm picking up a dog around you." Note the
vagueness of the reference--not even an indication of whether the animal
is dead or alive or what link it might have to the person. But the
caller offers the validation, "Oh, my dog died two years ago."
Some pet psychics, like Christa Carl, conduct "seance readings" for
animals who have "passed over." Asked to give an example of such a
seance, she replied (in Cooper and Noble 1996, 102):
Brandy, a dog, had been placed in a kennel by her owner when she got
married. She broke away from the kennel and got killed.
Her owner called me and told me she was having a hard time and wanted to
communicate with Brandy. When I did the reading with Brandy, I learned
from her that she didn't know why she had been put in the kennel. She
had felt abandoned, unloved, uncared for.
Her owner should have told her ahead of time why she needed to put her
in a kennel. I explained it to Brandy, and now she's at peace.
Of course, there is not the slightest bit of evidence that the spirit
was contacted or that, in fact, it existed anywhere other than in the
imagination of Christa Carl and, of course, the dog's grieving,
guilt-ridden, and credulous owner.
Such seems invariably the problem with claims involving psychic pets and
pet psychics. Based on anecdotal evidence--wonderful tales of psychic and
mediumistic success--they are not supported by scientific investigation.
Emmett Heinz Curley Bartlo
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 02:17:48 -0500, "Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca>
> wrote:
>
>
>>"Rosifer" <no...@nowhere.com>
>>
>>>What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the quality.
>>>
>>>What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong, but the times
>>>he gets something spot-on.
>>>
>>>Like this;
>>>
>>>"EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
>>>with cigarettes?
>>>
>>>CALLER: Yes.
Do you know how many smokers are buried with their cigarettes? A LOT of
them.
>>>
>>>EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
>>>-- was this the wrong brand?
>>>
>>>CALLER: Yeah."
And how the FUCK would a person know what a coprse was buried with? Did
they exhume him?
>>
>>A 50% chance. Big deal.
>
>
> While there is 100% chance of you being a innumerate moron.
No, a moron is someone like you who ignores all the many misses and
celebrates the lucky (or faked) hits.
Rosifer
<eh...@kookhallofame.com> wrote:
>Rosifer wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 02:17:48 -0500, "Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"Rosifer" <no...@nowhere.com>
>>>
>
>Do you know how many smokers are buried with their cigarettes?
No, do you?
Do you have the statistics handy?
> A LOT of
>them.
Ahh... you don't.
>>>>EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
>>>>-- was this the wrong brand?
>>>>
>>>>CALLER: Yeah."
>
>And how the FUCK would a person know what a coprse was buried with?
Oh, I don't know... perhaps they put the FUCKING things in their cold
dead hands?
> Did
>they exhume him?
It seems like some misguided soul has exhumed you, unfortunately
without reinstalling the grey matter.
>>>A 50% chance. Big deal.
>>
>>
>> While there is 100% chance of you being a innumerate moron.
>
>No, a moron is someone like you who ignores all the many misses and
>celebrates the lucky (or faked) hits.
How is this relevant to whether somone being buried with the wrong
brand of cigarettes is an occurence that happens 50% of the time?
Rosifer
Rosifer
wrote:
>Rosifer <no...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4 Mar 2004 12:55:30 GMT, John Griffin
>> <thathi...@yahooie.com> wrote:
>>
>>>zalzon <zalzon...@zalll.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>The word "fraud" works better than "fake."
>>>
>>>They aren't just pretending to be something they aren't.
>>>They're trying to use that pretense as a means of scamming
>>>desperate old ladies out of their life's savings.
>>
>> I love the smell of false indignation in the morning.
>
>If you could smell impuissant cretin, you'd gag yourself.
How is that relevant to whether you are filled with false indignation?
>Be careful...your dumb remark could leave the impression that
>you don't understand that Edward and his low-life ilk are all
>frauds.
It could leave that impression to a braindead moonbat, who is unable
to follow a rather simple thread.
Most people don't have your comprehension problems though.
>I wouldn't have accused you of being that stupid, but
>if you insist...
What I insist is, that you don't give a fuck about old ladies, much
less whether they lose their life savings.
That's because you are a hypocritical piece of shit.
Rosifer
tim gueguen
"Rosifer" <no...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:q4bh401cc6ecsd7ge...@4ax.com...
claimed that the voice of God was telling him this and that about some of
the people he "healed," when in reality it was the voice of his wife over an
in ear receiver, using information gathered by people working the crowd
before his performance. The revelation of this technique didn't keep Popoff
out of action. He was soon back at his shameful scamming of believers.
tim gueguen 101867
Fredric L. Rice
>Hi,
>I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
"Psychics" don't exist; they're all fake. What the bifurcation shows
is that some of them know they're putting on an act while others might
well honestly believe they are psychic. And of those who know they're
putting on an act there's the further divisions of those who do it to
defraud the ignorant and gullible and those who are providing magic
entertainment.
---
"More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than-I say more Muslims-a
lot of Muslims have died-I don't know the exact count-at Istanbul. Look at
these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death
and destruction because killers kill."- GWBush Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2004
Rosifer
wrote:
I see.
How is this relevant as to whether John Edward mikes up the audience
for 'hot reading'?
Rosifer
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
wrote:
Let that psychic contact me - he should know where to find me.
Lily
neutral ground to prove/disprove his abilities. But Randi did not want
to meet on neutral ground insisting that he have total control of the
experiment.>>
I think this may be a misiunderstanding in either reading or reporting.
What Randi probably insisted on (and most mediums wont' agree to) is not
to have total control of the experiment, but to set up controlled
conditions for the test. Obviously, if the medium sets up the ground
rules for what's supposed to be a scientific experiment, it won't be an
objective one.
Lily
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
>On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 02:44:13 GMT, m II <ohmwork...@spots.ca>
>wrote:
>
>>zalzon wrote:
>
>>> Hi,
>>> I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>>> find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>>
>>It would be lot more convincing if it were live.
>
>John Edward has done it live, yet I'm still not convinced.
>
>> They tape about three
>>or four (or more) hours per one hour air time. What you see is heavily
>>edited to make him look good.
>
>What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the quality.
>
>What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong, but the times
>he gets something spot-on.
>
>Like this;
>
>"EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
>with cigarettes?
>
>CALLER: Yes.
>
>EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
>-- was this the wrong brand?
>
>CALLER: Yeah."
Maybe the caller was a plant.
But even more telling is that John Eward goes out on a limb many times
with similar bold statements and then he is completely WRONG - he is
wrong most of the time. But that does seem to worry his devoted
deluded followers at all. They are VERY forgiving. And the rest of us
in the real world can only but laugh.
>
>You can find the whole transcript here;
>http://www.nytix.com/TVShows/NewYork/JohnEdward/transcripts/
>
>>The studio also has people planted outside to listen to the audience
>>members before they come in. Once inside, there are microphones
>>everywhere. The long wait before the taping starts gives them even more
>>information.
>
>This is far more interesting and would explain a lot.
>
>Do you have any evidence that he is using any form of 'hot reading'?
>
>>People talk while they're waiting. "I'll ask about dead uncle Harry"
>>says one audience member to another. That gets sent to 'psychic' in
>>waiting. This provides information that the fraud can use once he is
>>out on stage.
>
>The problem I have with this is the same that I have for many
>conspiracy theories.
>
>The more conspirators there are, the more likely it is that the truth
>will get out.
>
>If he is miking the audience up before they go to air, surely someone,
>a sound engineer, a stagehand, or anyone connected with the show,
>would be able to supply some proof that this is happening, wouldn't
>they?
>
>Surely sceptics could plant a few people in the audience to start
>talking about non-existent people who had 'passed over', and then if
>this false information was used by John Edward, you would have a
>smoking gun, and the whole thing could be laid to rest, so to speak.
>
>What a coup for sceptics that would be!
>
>Why haven't they done so?
>
>>A good 'expose' may be found here.
>>
>>http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/2003/VOID0509.htm
>
>It's hardly an expose, it is more like a series of guesses and
>assumptions.
>
>
>
>Rosifer
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
Typical - when cornered you get rude.
Your response i sway over the top.
>>
>>No, a moron is someone like you who ignores all the many misses and
>>celebrates the lucky (or faked) hits.
PLEASE respond to the above statement!
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
You have got wrong - the fraud has the burdon of proof upon him.
>
>
>
>Rosifer
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
(Fredric L. Rice) wrote:
>zalzon <zalzon...@zalll.com> wrote:
>>Hi,
>>I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
>>find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>
>"Psychics" don't exist; they're all fake.
And they want us to prove whatever. The proof that they are fake is in
front of our very eyes. Just notice how vague John Edward is with the
names of persons. It is laughable to look beyond that and believe. And
what about all his horrible misses?
> What the bifurcation shows
>is that some of them know they're putting on an act while others might
>well honestly believe they are psychic. And of those who know they're
>putting on an act there's the further divisions of those who do it to
>defraud the ignorant and gullible and those who are providing magic
>entertainment.
They all should be in jail.
Lily
Rosifer>>
Absolutely. If someone makes extraordinary claims, it's not up to those
who don't believe it to disprove them. The person who makes the claim
is t he one who has to back it up with proof.
Lily
Emmett Heinz Curley Bartlo
Crooks and thieves often use the same scams, dipshit.
John Griffin
wrote:
> On 5 Mar 2004 00:04:33 GMT, John Griffin
> <thathi...@yahooie.com> wrote:
>
>>Rosifer <no...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 4 Mar 2004 12:55:30 GMT, John Griffin
>>> <thathi...@yahooie.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>zalzon <zalzon...@zalll.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>The word "fraud" works better than "fake."
>>>>
>>>>They aren't just pretending to be something they aren't.
>>>>They're trying to use that pretense as a means of
>>>>scamming desperate old ladies out of their life's
>>>>savings.
>>>
>>> I love the smell of false indignation in the morning.
>>
>>If you could smell impuissant cretin, you'd gag yourself.
>
> How is that relevant to whether you are filled with false
> indignation?
Are you under the impression that your blurting "false
indignation" has something to do with anything at all?
Please say no; I wouldn't want to think you're that fucking
stupid.
>>Be careful...your dumb remark could leave the impression
>>that you don't understand that Edward and his low-life ilk
>>are all frauds.
>
> It could leave that impression to a braindead moonbat, who
> is unable to follow a rather simple thread.
>
> Most people don't have your comprehension problems though.
>
>>I wouldn't have accused you of being that stupid, but
>>if you insist...
>
> What I insist is, that you don't give a fuck about old
> ladies, much less whether they lose their life savings.
I suppose that means you think not giving a fuck about old
ladies being scammed by criminal fraud is a normal way of
thinking, based on the fact that you have no objections to such
things. Here's a news flash for you, bimbo: Your attempts to
think are not related to anything normal. You're portraying
yourself here as something slightly dumber than a fish.
> That's because you are a hypocritical piece of shit.
<snicker> With such a weak mind, you should find some way to
remind yourself not to either jump to idiotic conclusions like
those or try to actually analyze information and form idiotic
conclusions like those. Keep in mind the established fact that
you're only capable of reflex, not thought. (The fact that you
believe "psychics" are for real established it, in case you were
going to ask.)
You're merely having a sputtering fit because I pointed out the
fact that people who call themselves "psychics" and shit like
that are criminals. Fulminate some more, fuckhead. It's funny
to see you beat yourself up like that.
JohnnyCJohnny
Ms. Sally 732-247-1907 (Somerset, NJ)
Sandra 732-752-8885 (Middlesex, NJ)
Frank St. James 973-882-8331 (North Brunswick, NJ)
Give them a call, I think you'll be impressed. Of course, you'll
probably have to go see them in person to have a reading done. As far
as I know, these people aren't phone pyschics.
Paul Murray
> recalled the pet she had as a ten-year-old). Then the psychic felt the
> presence of "a man who passed in his 70s from something in his chest." The
> previous year, I had lost a good friend who was 75, dying of emphysema. His
And who *doesn't* know of someone in their 70s who had a heart attack,
stroke, lung cancer, etc...?
John Griffin
Just out of curiosity, do you actually doubt that he does? Just
check the appropriate box.
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Deborah G. Buckner
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 11:24:21 -0600, "Deborah G. Buckner"
> <d...@thebucknerhomethetrash.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >"JohnnyCJohnny" <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote in message
> >news:cd2ccfd9.0403...@posting.google.com...
> >>It still doesn't
> >> account for some of the really specific information that John Edward
> >> comes up with, like a conversation someone had the night before they
> >> came to the show or something they said to a loved one before they
> >> passed, their favorite song, etc.
> >
> >I can't speak to the psychics mentioned in this topic, but I do believe
some
> >people have such powers. A friend recommended someone to me,
>
> phoned him.
Possible, but I knew the friend only through shared interest on a
professional topic, and at that point, that was all we had discussed. The
friend didn't know any of my family background, so could not have briefed
the psychic as you seem to assume.
> Let this "psychic" contact me and let us see if he can convince me.
> That is not an unreasonable request!
I suspect you wouldn't be willing to pay for a reading fee.
> >and I had a
> >reading last year, over the telephone from half a country away. (The
> >psychic held a letter I had written during the reading).
>
> And the fact that he was holding that letter means........
Just to alleviate your assumptions about the letter's contents, it was
simply a note of confirmation as to the time of the appointment. I suspect
holding the letter really doesn't mean anything, but it is a physical
contact.
> > It was similar to
> >the "crossing over" type of reading. Certain relatives came through in
such
> >a way I was certain who they were. One told me to ask my mother about
her
> >pet chicken (a family story I didn't know, but my mother immediately
> >recalled the pet she had as a ten-year-old). Then the psychic felt the
> >presence of "a man who passed in his 70s from something in his chest."
The
>
> If he is realy that good why is he so vague?
> He inaccurate about his age, " in his 70s" does not do it for me, he
> did not identify the person(he did not even "know" that it was a
> friend) and was vague about what he died from.
Well, it's not like people are lining up reciting name, rank and serial
number. The reader receives impressions. An interesting point, when the
reader mentioned this person, I identified him as a longtime friend of my
father's. The reader was puzzled for a moment, and said, "But he was close
to your mother, too, because when your grandmother was talking a moment ago
[giving me some advice on how to handle a facet of my mother's personality],
this man was laughing." In fact, although my father first introduced this
man into our lives, he and my mother became close friends, too, and this
particular personality point of my mother's had been a constant source of
amusement to this man.
> >previous year, I had lost a good friend who was 75, dying of emphysema.
His
> >comments to me, passed through the psychic, were directly finishing a
> >conversation he and I had had upon first learning he was ill.
> >
> >This psychic knew nothing about me and couldn't even see me.
> Ah, but he held that letter in his hand - that explains
> everything??????
Your hostility convinces me there's no point in trying to explain to you.
You either believe or you don't. Obviously, you've never experienced
something like this and you're probably not willing to try.
> >Also, I had
> >seen the Saturday Night Live spoof of John Edward and how the audience
> >members can sometimes feed information, so I was very guarded in my
> >responses to the psychic's comments and ddn't reveal anything. I was
> >impressed with the reading and felt the experience was real. So real,
that
> >I don't know if I ever want to do it again.
> OK give me a try then - seriously. Why do I have this feeling that
> nothing will come of this!
Go ahead. Make my day.
> I am cc'ing this za.humour, if they want to flame me for that then so
> be it - I just think this is so funny! A lot of fun can be had with
> this thread. Bu that is up to you and you and......
I don't blame you. If you find humor, then your day has been brightened by
this conversation, and that's never a bad thing. There are things one can't
begin to understand until experiencing them. As Shakespeare said, "There
are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,
Horatio [or whoever you are!]
Deb
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http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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John Griffin
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 02:17:48 -0500, "Happy Dog"
> <happ...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>"Rosifer" <no...@nowhere.com>
>>
>>> What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the
>>> quality.
>>>
>>> What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong,
>>> but the times he gets something spot-on.
>>>
>>> Like this;
>>>
>>> "EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did
>>> you bury him with cigarettes?
>>>
>>> CALLER: Yes.
>>>
>>> EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to
>>> sound strange -- was this the wrong brand?
>>>
>>> CALLER: Yeah."
>>
>>A 50% chance. Big deal.
>
> While there is 100% chance of you being a innumerate moron.
You sure are bitchy, for an airhead. John Edward is an
entertainer. Normal people laugh at his sham, but if he reads
this stuff, he's laughing at you. He should be saying "What?!
Some featherbrain thinks I'm too stupid to choreograph this
nonsense to make me look as good as possible?!" Lots of people
are laughing at you for your idiotic leap to the conclusion that
the guy is innumerate. It might interest you to know that a
"yes or no" question is always a 50/50 proposition, absent some
pertinent information favoring or disfavoring either choice.
That's because there are two choices, and that they're equally
likely if you're just guessing. Since they're equally likely
and the sum of their probabilities is 1.00, i.e., it's 100% that
one or the other is correct, each one is a 50% proposition. You
don't have to take my word for that. Anyone over the age of ten
would be expected to know it, so just ask the first person you
see. After you get that, you need to ask your therapist if
there's some odd reason why you, of all people, used the word
"innumerate."
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
Exactly - and THEY think we are ALL idiots.
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
<d...@thebucknerhomethetrash.com> wrote:
And how does that help him. Is there a spirit in the letter?
I am NOT hostile - whatever gave you that idea?
>
>Your hostility convinces me there's no point in trying to explain to you.
>You either believe or you don't.
You want me to believe unconditionally - whatever anybody comes up
with - I must just believe.
If somebody suddenly starts claiming h ecan turn lead into gold - must
I JUST BELIEVE! What psychics claim is even more unbelievable than
that.
>Obviously, you've never experienced
>something like this and you're probably not willing to try.
>
>> >Also, I had
>> >seen the Saturday Night Live spoof of John Edward and how the audience
>> >members can sometimes feed information, so I was very guarded in my
>> >responses to the psychic's comments and ddn't reveal anything. I was
>> >impressed with the reading and felt the experience was real. So real,
>that
>> >I don't know if I ever want to do it again.
>> OK give me a try then - seriously. Why do I have this feeling that
>> nothing will come of this!
>
>Go ahead. Make my day.
Clint Eastwood impersonator!
su-t...@webtv.net
I believe there is energy around us, both good & bad, which tries to
influence and/or inform us.
The people & pets we've known, & who've passed on, are a part of this
energy.
Some people appear more sensitive to this energy than others, & are able
to get more information. These people are called psychics, seers, etc.,
& some cultures value & respect them.
On TV, most "psychics" seem phony. Only a few seem real.
-----------
Fakers
In real life, it can be rather frightening to meet someone who appears
or claims to be "fey" (psychic). So far, they've all proved arrogant
fakes.
They'll collect information on people, then jump them suddenly with it,
in order to overwhelm & con them, to scare & confuse them, & to gain
some power & control over them, ... in order to use them and to get
attention.
My Mom does this. This morning, she told me again she was "fey". But
from what she says, I'm sure she's not.
Mom's mindset seems to be "the norm" in those people, with the
very-common Narcissistic & Antisocial Moral Disorders. They claim to be
superior to others, & entitled to take, abuse & harm, etc., ... then
they'll develop excuses such as having psychic abilities, ... in the
absence of their having something useful like talent, work skills,
knowledge & such. I believe this is called "magical thinking",
fantasies, delusions of grandeur.
However, I do believe that some people have varying levels of skill &
abilities, as psychics. Not all are pretenders.
-----------
Developing Skills
It's important to learn relaxation skills, in order to connect better
with this energy, ... to develop better intuition & savvy, better
observation skills, better survival skills, etc., ... & to use this only
for good & positive purposes.
Everyone probably has limited psychic skills.
And No, I can't do what the psychics (such as the Pet Psychic & Sylvia
Browne) do, nor would I want to.
When I was young, & my parents were trying to kill me for the insurance
money ($5000), ... I'd feel something, get a warning, & be able to get
out of danger in time, ... which did anger & frustrate my parents a lot.
These warnings could be called "psychic skills", "good energy", or
"guardian angels". And yes, the good they do is very real.
Susan, Su_Texas my opinions
PS It seems a bad idea to pay anyone money, to use their
psychic/intuitive skills.
It's important to be self-reliant, & to develop your own.
MC.
su-t...@webtv.net wrote:
> A Theory
>
> I believe there is energy around us, both good & bad, which tries to
> influence and/or inform us.
>
> The people & pets we've known, & who've passed on, are a part of this
> energy.
>
> Some people appear more sensitive to this energy than others, & are able
> to get more information. These people are called psychics, seers, etc.,
> & some cultures value & respect them.
You *believe* in this energy. What is the basis for this belief? Do you
have any actual evidence that it exists?
su-t...@webtv.net
You *believe* in this energy. What is the basis for this belief? Do you
have any actual evidence that it exists?
=======
When you stop to think about it, what can you prove for absolutely sure?
Susan, Su_Texas my opinions
George
well that is what they depend upon for their scams to work.
and when they are confronted with people like Penn & Teller or James
Randi their claims just seem to evaporate..
JohnnyCJohnny
Well, I for one don't. I'll tell you what, my experience with
psyhcics is that if you sliced and diced what they had to say, it
could apply to a lot of people. But, when they tell you numerous
things that are dead on about you and people you've known who have
passsed, it does make you wonder where they are getting the info from.
I mean, old people have all sorts of ailments. The psychic could
have just as easily said something like I see someone in an old person
who has a problem in their legs or in their head. But, they were more
specific and guessed the problem area correctly. You can't just
dismiss that as guessing. I don't know anyone in their 70s right now,
so that would be a wrong guess in my case.
Deborah G. Buckner
In my case, that particular friend was the only such person I knew. If I
had had a reading a year before and the reader said the same thing, it
wouldn't have fit.
A few months before I had the reading, I had a strong feeling about a
particular course of action I had to take. While carrying out the task I
felt compelled to do, I met a young man, and when he asked me why I was
doing this, I told him my story. He said, "Wow, that's kind of psychic."
He told me of a spiritualist church he attended "where you go in and people
can tell you what your angels are saying." Skeptical, I asked, "What
happens if your angels aren't talking that day?" Without missing a beat, he
replied, "Oh, your angels are always talking to you, but you won't listen.
So they have to find a psychic who can deliver the message." This did get
me thinking, and when my friend told me of her psychic reading, I decided to
try. The perception I had after the reading is best analogized to a group
of soldiers or summer campers waiting in a crowd to get to the one working
telephone. As soon as the telephone becomes available, the person grabs it
and speaks directly to the person s/he wants to reach; there's no need to
speak specific details--if the connection goes through, the person at the
other end of the line will know who it is. When you participate in a
reading, you don't have a guarantee you will reach a particular person--it
depends on who is there, waiting to make the connection. (I think John
Edward says this, that the person who comes through might be the
mother-in-law who always hated you, and guess what, she still does!).
During my reading--in which three people came through--it repeatedly seemed
like my reader was that telephone, and each of the three grabbed the
connection to say what they had to say. They didn't need to tell the reader
their names, specific dates, etc., because they were simply using the reader
as a conduit to me. (My grandmother was a bit pushy, interrupting the
others a couple of times to say a few more things to me).
In my instance, my departed friend continued a specific conversation he
and I had had several months before; my grandmother gave me specific advice
on a topic she and I knew well and referred to an old family story that no
one else could possibly have known; my father reflected on a few specific
memories which, while admittedly not unique to the two of us, had been
especially important to the two of us. I accept that for what it is, and
I'm quite certain a stranger half a country away who knew nothing about me
could not alone have luckily come up with these specific details.
Nobody reading this has to believe my experience, nor do you have to be
angry because I had it. I'm simply sharing one personal experience for
those of questioning minds who are interested in this particular topic. I
wouldn't use my experience to whole-heartedly recommend all those who hold
themselves out as psychics, because I'm sure there are a great many frauds
out there. But I do believe some people have peculiar gifts to act as
conduits to the other side, and I think I was lucky to have found one.
tim gueguen
Popoff claimed it was God who was giving him the information and not his own
personal psychic powers is irrelevant, the scam is the same.
tim gueguen 101867
Kyle
him in action, I couldn't believe how bad - how blatantly fake - he
is. You'd have to be extremely dumb to buy Edwards' routine.
Kyle
> On Fri, 05 Mar 2004 03:57:56 GMT, Fr...@SkepticTank.REMOVE.ORG
> (Fredric L. Rice) wrote:
>
> >zalzon <zalzon...@zalll.com> wrote:
> >>Hi,
> >>I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to be honest, I
> >>find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
> >
> >"Psychics" don't exist; they're all fake.
>
> And they want us to prove whatever. The proof that they are fake is in
> front of our very eyes. Just notice how vague John Edward is with the
> names of persons. It is laughable to look beyond that and believe. And
> what about all his horrible misses?
He's terrible! Uri Gellar was better then Edwards.
Lorrill Buyens
"Ambrose" <ambrose...@hotmail.com>, the Chosen One, protested:
> On the other hand skeptics and so-called skeptics forums are basically
>also methods of making money for the skeptics. They themselves are
>charlatans, particularly when while they claim they are doing it for the
>public good, when they are really skeptics as a way of getting rich
>themselves.
Oh yeah, people like James Randi and Martin Gardner are rolling in
dough. Not!
>I'm not saying that the people on TV are really
>psychic, but the studies being done in a number of university studies do
>suggest some sort of mathematically provable effect, at least in the area of
>psycho-kinesis, and precognition.
So why is it that when identical experiments are performed by skeptics,
these "effects" disappear?
>The most interesting studies I saw were of people with
>some sort of ability to project some kind of electro-magnetic energy that
>could, even at a considerable distance, cause another person to go into
>heart arrhythmia.
Proof?
> The spookiest part of this story to me comes from a woman I know who
>works with survivors of child sexual abuse. At the top of the donors for the
>false memory foundations, and the groups who fund defense for parents and
>others accused of sexually abusing children are skeptics groups. Why?
Because talking kids into "accusing" relatives and caregivers of sexual
abuse is pseudoscience at its worst, and pseudoscience is one of the
things skeptics try to combat? (Have you ever heard of the "McMartin
preschool" case?)
> Ciscop(I believe is the group) has also been linked with various
>so-called satanic groups at least one of which was implicated in a child
>sexual abuse ring. I know this because I was one of the Army interrogators
>in a case in the eighties concerning a high ranking officer who was
>identified as a "Satanist." And one of the publishers of one of the main
>skeptic magazines was listed by Interpol as an agent for a satanic group
>operating out of Switzerland.
Proof?
>Randi makes his
>offers and claims, but when checked out he repeatedly stalls and avoids any
>situation wherein he might get skunked by a mentalist or someone with
>slight of hand skills that would embarrass him, so I resist using Randi's
>criteria for determining what is real or fake because Mr. Randi is a man who
>has a clear monetary agenda.
Right, and that's why he's currently (a) running a nonprofit organization
and (b) offering a million-dollar prize which, to date, no professional psychic
has dared to claim.
> Actually I'm pretty amazed that no one in the media has given popular
>psychic-skeptic Randi a thorough going over. I do know that Randi took up
>his lucrative skeptic job when his escape artist skills began to fail him.
>And it was at a time when even in the hinterlands small theaters had given
>up vaudeville shows and most magicians were considered dead weight on show
>business bills, below jugglers and ventriloquists.
Precisely how old do you think Randi *is*? I'm prtty sure he's in his sixties,
and vaudeville was dead by the 1940's, at the very latest.
>But using skepticism as a
>cottage industry isn't Randi's only avocation. In England, he was
>investigated for propositioning young boys.
Proof?
(followups set: sci.skeptic)
--
"...They made me a present of Mornington Crescent,
They threw it a brick at a time..."
- "The Night I Appeared as Macbeth," an old music-hall song
Wally Anglesea™
<eh...@kookhallofame.com> wrote:
>Rosifer wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 02:17:48 -0500, "Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"Rosifer" <no...@nowhere.com>
>>>
>>>>What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the quality.
>>>>
>>>>What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong, but the times
>>>>he gets something spot-on.
>>>>
>>>>Like this;
>>>>
>>>>"EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
>>>>with cigarettes?
>>>>
>>>>CALLER: Yes.
>
>Do you know how many smokers are buried with their cigarettes? A LOT of
>them.
>>>>
I would also point out that this exchange was at the END of a long
session on Larry King, when John Edwards was spruiking a book. Up till
that point John Edwards had been very, very poor indeed. In fact, one
caller even said NO, your'e wrong, and it almost became argumentative,
with John Edwards telling the caller *she* was wrong., and they then
cut the call.
Coming as it did at the very end of a pretty pathetic session, my
skeptic, and an *uncontrolled half hour advert for one of JE's books,
My skeptic antennae vibrated.
>>>>EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
>>>>-- was this the wrong brand?
>>>>
>>>>CALLER: Yeah."
>
>And how the FUCK would a person know what a coprse was buried with? Did
>they exhume him?
>>>
>>>A 50% chance. Big deal.
>>
>>
>> While there is 100% chance of you being a innumerate moron.
>
>No, a moron is someone like you who ignores all the many misses and
>celebrates the lucky (or faked) hits.
--
Find out about Australia's most dangerous Doomsday Cult:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/wanglese/pebble.htm
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http://users.bigpond.net.au/wanglese/Alien_recipes.html
"You can't fool me, it's turtles all the way down."
JohnnyCJohnny
Deb,
I totally understand what you're talking about. Having a successful
session with a psyhcic or medium is hard to explain to people, but
when you're there and you're interacting with them and getting very
personal, specific and pertenant information, it's really quite
amazing. I mean, it's so specific about the dead person's personality
and characteristics, that you feel like you're talking to them again
(you know that there's something real going on, like how does this
person you never met know your relative or friend's personality?).
I agree, there are charlatans out there in the psychic/medium world
(beware!). It's import to work with someone reputable. The results
can be quite astounding, much more specific than can be accounted for
via the old cold reading gag. But, don't expect these skeptics to
believe you. I've been through it with them many times in the past
(go look up some of my postings on this newsgroup). They always
rationalize it one way or another, but amazingly aren't open-minded or
curious enough to acutally visit a psychic for themselves. That's the
only reason I went to see a psychic in the first place, to satisfy a
cureosity. I really didn't expect much from the experience, but was
amazed with some of the very specific information that I received,
like the exact conversation I had with my fiance during the past week,
my exact financial situation, etc. It's up to everyone to make up
their minds about psychic/mediums, unfortunately many skeptics have
already made up their minds without ever doing any actual
investigative work. The world is full of self-righteous know-it-alls
who think they have it all figured out (little do they know, it's
real!).
Lily
<<Ms. Sally 732-247-1907 (Somerset, NJ)
Sandra 732-752-8885 (Middlesex, NJ)
Frank St. James 973-882-8331 (North Brunswick, NJ)
Give them a call, I think you'll be impressed. Of course, you'll
probably have to go see them in person to have a reading done. As far as
I know, these people aren't phone pyschics.>>
I think I've told this story before, but maybe not here. A co uple of
friends of mine made an appointment to get readings from a new psychic
in town. When they got to her house at the specified time, she said
she'd have to postpone their readings because she'd gotten unexpected
company.
Lily
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
OK maybe, but that excludes John Edward, Sylvia Browne and James van
Praagh!!
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
wrote:
With people like John Edward etc. around it makes it difficult to
believe!
Johan van Zyl - JVZ Systems CC
<wang...@spammersbigpondareparasites.net.au> wrote:
>On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 16:36:10 -0800, Emmett Heinz Curley Bartlo
><eh...@kookhallofame.com> wrote:
>
>>Rosifer wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 02:17:48 -0500, "Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>"Rosifer" <no...@nowhere.com>
>>>>
>>>>>What makes him look good is not the quantity, but the quality.
>>>>>
>>>>>What I find of interest is not how much he gets wrong, but the times
>>>>>he gets something spot-on.
>>>>>
>>>>>Like this;
>>>>>
>>>>>"EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
>>>>>with cigarettes?
>>>>>
>>>>>CALLER: Yes.
>>
>>Do you know how many smokers are buried with their cigarettes? A LOT of
>>them.
That caller was possibly a plant!
>>>>>
>
>
>I would also point out that this exchange was at the END of a long
>session on Larry King, when John Edwards was spruiking a book. Up till
>that point John Edwards had been very, very poor indeed. In fact, one
>caller even said NO, your'e wrong, and it almost became argumentative,
>with John Edwards telling the caller *she* was wrong., and they then
>cut the call.
>
>Coming as it did at the very end of a pretty pathetic session, my
>skeptic, and an *uncontrolled half hour advert for one of JE's books,
>My skeptic antennae vibrated.
And how do the John Edward fans respond?
Wally Anglesea™
Well, they'll probably claim that Larry King and CNN are above
reproach, and assume that it was all purely honorable.
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>>EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- I know this is going to sound strange
>>>>>>-- was this the wrong brand?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>CALLER: Yeah."
>>>
>>>And how the FUCK would a person know what a coprse was buried with? Did
>>>they exhume him?
>>>>>
>>>>>A 50% chance. Big deal.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> While there is 100% chance of you being a innumerate moron.
>>>
>>>No, a moron is someone like you who ignores all the many misses and
>>>celebrates the lucky (or faked) hits.
--
ordosclan
> 50% chance !?!
>
> So you are saying that there is a major trend of people buring their
> relatives with smokes at the moment...???
>
> Think about it!
>
> Its like saying... "you won the lottery last weekend..." (At a 50% chance of
> the phsycic getting it right, it might be worth playing! instead of the
> current odds of some 14x8:1)
Chance averages are in the 20's.
JohnnyCJohnny
The point is, don't take my word or Deb's word or any John Edward
fan's word for it. Go see for yourself. Find a reputable psychic or
two in your area and see if they tell you some astounding things.
It's not that expensive to check out psychics.
John M Price PhD
: Deb,
: I totally understand what you're talking about. Having a successful
: session with a psyhcic or medium is hard to explain to people, but
: when you're there and you're interacting with them and getting very
: personal, specific and pertenant information, it's really quite
: amazing. I mean, it's so specific about the dead person's personality
: and characteristics, that you feel like you're talking to them again
: (you know that there's something real going on, like how does this
: person you never met know your relative or friend's personality?).
Generally, if you had a tape of all teh interactions witht he so-called
psychic, hints of those data you find amazing will be all over the place.
To you, these discussiona and the information they hold are commonplace,
and you likely forget the specific event of mentioning things to the
psychic, as you've done so to family and close firneds often. To the
psychic, however, this is shear gold. The pathway to your reading. They
remember it and feed it back.
(c) 2004. Copyright, John M. Price, PhD. All Rights Reserved.
Contents may not be republished in any form or medium without prior
written consent of the author with the express and only exception of
followup postings limited to and within usenet.
--
John M. Price, PhD jmp...@calweb.com
Life: Chemistry, but with feeling! | PGP Key on request or FTP!
Email responses to my Usenet articles will be posted at my discretion.
Comoderator: sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated Atheist# 683
Peanut Blossoms
4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
8 eggs 4 tsp. soda
4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
hell of a lot.
NO CARRIER
Deborah G. Buckner
"John M Price PhD" <jmp...@calweb.com> wrote in message
news:404a02bd$0$97598$d36...@news.calweb.com...
> In sci.skeptic article <cd2ccfd9.0403...@posting.google.com>
JohnnyCJohnny <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote:
>
> : Deb,
>
> : I totally understand what you're talking about. Having a successful
> : session with a psyhcic or medium is hard to explain to people, but
> : when you're there and you're interacting with them and getting very
> : personal, specific and pertenant information, it's really quite
> : amazing. I mean, it's so specific about the dead person's personality
> : and characteristics, that you feel like you're talking to them again
> : (you know that there's something real going on, like how does this
> : person you never met know your relative or friend's personality?).
>
> Generally, if you had a tape of all teh interactions witht he so-called
> psychic, hints of those data you find amazing will be all over the place.
> To you, these discussiona and the information they hold are commonplace,
> and you likely forget the specific event of mentioning things to the
> psychic, as you've done so to family and close firneds often. To the
> psychic, however, this is shear gold. The pathway to your reading. They
> remember it and feed it back.
A good point. The psychic who performed my reading supplied a tape of the
conversation (included with the reading fee). I have listened to it several
times. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, I was guarded in
my responses (for the exact purpose you reference, not wanting to give
information away). I think it would a reasonable request to expect a tape
recording of the reading.
Deb
JohnnyCJohnny
> joh...@patmedia.net (JohnnyCJohnny) wrote
>
> > NY is one loudmouthed place, people aren't afraid to speak
> > their minds, yet noone has ever publicly accussed John Edward of being
> > a fraud?!? Curious.
>
> He's been both accused AND accussed in South Park's episode about him,
> "The Biggest Douche In the Universe."
yada yada yada :-()
JohnnyCJohnny
>
> : Deb,
>
> : I totally understand what you're talking about. Having a successful
> : session with a psyhcic or medium is hard to explain to people, but
> : when you're there and you're interacting with them and getting very
> : personal, specific and pertenant information, it's really quite
> : amazing. I mean, it's so specific about the dead person's personality
> : and characteristics, that you feel like you're talking to them again
> : (you know that there's something real going on, like how does this
> : person you never met know your relative or friend's personality?).
>
> To you, these discussiona and the information they hold are commonplace,
> and you likely forget the specific event of mentioning things to the
> psychic, as you've done so to family and close firneds often. To the
> psychic, however, this is shear gold. The pathway to your reading. They
> remember it and feed it back.
>
That was not the case. I understand how cold reading works. What she
did was very accurately describe a situation I went through as a
teenager in which I was hospitalized for depression. She did not ask
me any questions along those lines beforehand. She even correctly
stated the exact amount of time I was in the hospital: 3 months. It
was dead on in my case and rather impressive.
zalzon
wrote:
>It might interest you to know that a
>"yes or no" question is always a 50/50 proposition, absent some
did you even read the original dialog before posting?
"EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did you bury him
with cigarettes?"
Is there a 50/50 odds to that? Do 50% of people in the country bury
their dead with cigarettes?
zalzon
discussion unless it can be shown that edwards or acorah are doing the
same. Its a strawman argument.
My intent of posting the original message was to find out if either
edwards or acorah are faking it and if so HOW. So far the doubters
have not presented any concrete evidence of how John Edwards or Derek
Acorah can come up with such private info.
Their explaination (e.g. eves dropping on conversations prior to the
show) is rather unbelievable given the number of shows these mediums
have conducted.
zalzon
It might be useful to present it rather than hurl obseneties.
tho...@antispam.ham
No. It's more than that.
tho...@antispam.ham
> What is your evidence that Edwards is a fraud.
His failures.
John Griffin
> On 5 Mar 2004 14:21:41 GMT, John Griffin
> <thathi...@yahooie.com> wrote:
>
>>It might interest you to know that a
>>"yes or no" question is always a 50/50 proposition, absent
>>some
>
>
> did you even read the original dialog before posting?
Yes. Did you take it seriously? Do you really believe the
fraud didn't get that information in advance?
> "EDWARD: OK. He's telling me -- this is strange, but did
> you bury him with cigarettes?"
>
> Is there a 50/50 odds to that? Do 50% of people in the
> country bury their dead with cigarettes?
My god...I think we've found someone who doesn't know how
carefully staged and edited the whole thing was. Edward is an
entertainer. Has he given any indication that if he had any
"psychic powers," he wouldn't be interested in getting an easy
million dollars by demonstrating them in a live, unedited
session?
Anyway, it's funny that you ask whether I read that. The
question you parroted from his carefully contrived show wasn't
the one that someone said was a 50-50 thing.
John Griffin
> m II <ohmwork...@spots.ca> wrote in message
> news:<1Kw1c.128817$Hy3.99945@edtnps89>...
>> zalzon wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Hi,
>> > I've watched these celebrity psychics on TV and to
>> > be honest, I
>> > find it hard to tell if they are real or just faking it.
>> >
>>
>> It would be lot more convincing if it were live. They tape
>> about three or four (or more) hours per one hour air time.
>> What you see is heavily edited to make him look good.
>>
>> The studio also has people planted outside to listen to
>> the audience members before they come in. Once inside,
>> there are microphones everywhere. The long wait before the
>> taping starts gives them even more information.
>>
>> People talk while they're waiting. "I'll ask about dead
>> uncle Harry" says one audience member to another. That
>> gets sent to 'psychic' in waiting. This provides
>> information that the fraud can use once he is out on
>> stage.
>>
>
> That's pure conjecture on the part of the person who wrote
> the article, you state it as though it's fact. Why? Funny
> how "skeptics" have such a hard time sticking to the facts.
> There is no evidence that John Edward plants microphones
> to listen in on his audience members (something made up by
> skeptics and not supported by any evidence). There is also
> no evidence that people are planted outside listening to
> audience member converstations. I've read completely
> different accounts from people who went to a John Edward
> taping, they said people weren't talking before the show
> and that the show started promptly.
>
> Please, if you're going to post the stuff you post, note
> that it is conjecture and opinion, not supported by any
> real evidence. The one explanation that I've come across
> that might explain how John Edward comes up with his
> amazing information is that audience members arrange for
> tickets up to one year in advance, and it is possible that
> John Edward might have people collecting information on
> guests (hot reading) during that lag time. That is a
> plausible explanation for his amazing psychic skills, but
> yet unproven. It still doesn't account for some of the
> really specific information that John Edward comes up with,
> like a conversation someone had the night before they came
> to the show or something they said to a loved one before
> they passed, their favorite song, etc. That isn't public
> domain sort of information. Also, if John Edward was using
> hot reading methods of gathering information, why hasn't
> someone on his staff spilled the beans? He must pay them
> very well not to go to the NY Post and spill the beans. NY
> is one loudmouthed place, people aren't afraid to speak
> their minds, yet noone has ever publicly accussed John
> Edward of being a fraud?!? Curious.
The people who help Edward perpetrate his fraud want to keep
their jobs. At some point in their lives, they might want to
continue their careers in the entertainment business by working
on another show.
What makes you think no one has ever publicly exposed any of
Edward's fraudulent behavior? "TV psychics" actually expose it
by themselves whenever they're dumb enough to appear on a show
they can't edit.
Why do you so desperately want to believe the guy's act is
genuine? (Just curious.)
John Griffin
> What is your evidence that Edwards is a fraud.
>
> It might be useful to present it rather than hurl obseneties.
Useful? No. "Credulators" like you are going to swallow the
"psychic" stories regardless of information one way or the
other. He claims to have "psychic powers," so you believe it. I
suppose you believe everything you see on all other TV shows,
too.
Seriously, why do you want to believe those old stories? It's a
mystery why people have swallowed stuff like this since the very
first snake oil peddler set up shop thousands of years ago.
zalzon
wrote:
>> did you even read the original dialog before posting?
>
>Yes. Did you take it seriously? Do you really believe the
>fraud didn't get that information in advance?
Would you care to point out HOW he might get some of this info in
advance? Preferably explained without baseless accusations.
>My god...I think we've found someone who doesn't know how
>carefully staged and edited the whole thing was.
How many dozens of audience members does Edwards have on his payroll?
And more importantly do you have the proof of it. If not you are
wasting your energy typing.
>million dollars by demonstrating them in a live, unedited
>session?
I believe Van Praag has appeared live on Larry King taking phone calls
one after the other. He was reasonably specific with the details he
gave as far as I could see.
I'd like to see a test conducted on neutral ground. Neutral ground
would mean that the two parties agree on what constitutes a hit and
what is a miss during a reading. That puts aside all the people with
big egos namely the debunkers making baseless accusations and
charlatan psychics making baseless claims.